Word: audran
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Despite her name's presence in the title of this adaptation of an Isak Dinesen story, Babette Hersant (Stephane Audran) does not appear in the film until it is almost half over. Even then she is, as it were, in disguise. She is presented merely as a Frenchwoman rendered homeless and penniless by the Communard uprising of 1871 in Paris, seeking refuge in a remote village in Jutland on Denmark's northern coast. If there is something unusual in her bearing, its source -- an extraordinary talent -- is not hinted at. For 14 years she toils unpaid, uncomplaining, almost unspeaking...
Besse's death followed a series of murders of well-known European military and industrial leaders by indigenous terrorist organizations. In January 1985 Action Directe claimed responsibility for the death of General Rene Audran, a prominent French Ministry of Defense official. Days later, members of the West German Red Army Faction murdered Ernst Zimmermann, a Munich defense industrialist. Some experts believe the atrocities are linked, and point to a communique the two groups issued last year declaring they would form a "West European guerrilla movement." Last week French authorities were investigating a possible West German connection to the Besse slaying...
...Paris has cause for embarrassment. When the government of President Francois Mitterrand came to power nearly four years ago, it granted amnesty to members of the now outlawed Action Directe, an organization that has carried out nine bombing attacks in the past year in addition to the murder of Audran...
...French police, who have yet to make an arrest in the Audran killing, there was no question that West Germany's Red Army Faction and Action Directe have combined forces into what amounts to a single organization. Said a French official: "There were occasional instances of technical assistance before. The difference now is the tightening of cooperation on a common strategy, with Western defense organizations as primary targets. That has changed the picture entirely...
Beyond the rhetoric, police in Belgium and West Germany point out that both guerrilla groups used plastic explosives from a cache of 800 kilograms stolen last year from a quarry in Belgium. Last week, too, French police revealed that just before General Audran was shot, his eldest daughter received a phone call from a woman who asked in a heavy German accent whether her father was home. The French terrorists seem to take pains to identify themselves with their West German counterparts. After Audran's assassination, for example, Action Directe attributed the killing to what it called "the Elizabeth...