65 years after its finish, World War II is seemingly going to continue in movies forever. The 2006 Oscar-nominated “Indignes” (the translation is obvious; the English language title “Days of Glory” has no relationship to the French title; I’m not sure if it is meant ironically) has a lot of stock elements, including taking a mountain that is barer (more exposed) and nearly as steep as Monte Cassino and the bluff above Omaha Beach, and a finale many decades later in a military cemetery (I’d hoped that “Saving Pvt. Ryan” had killed off such scenes, but was wrong!). Plus, like innumerable previous military movies, this one has  a hard-bitten sergeant and a simple, tender-hearted soul (an Algerian who had been a shepherd before volunteering to reclaim the “fatherland” of France from the Germans), and a romantic interlude (in Marseilles).

For geographic range, it is in there with Sam Fuller’s “The Big Red One,” but the most obvious American analog is Spike Lee’s “Miracle at St. Anna” (made after “indigenes,” in 2008) or the US  Civil War “Glory" with a segregated African (north and sub-Saharan) unit winning part of the war despite shabby, discriminatory treatment by the armies in which the nonwhites are serving — and dying in disproportionate numbers on missions guaranteed to multiple casualties.

Roughly 200,000 troops recruited in the colonies fought the Germans in Europe, though their role seems to have been even more thoroughly elided from historical memory than the black “buffalo soldiers” in the US Army.

Though having a cast of thousands (the Moroccan army), the movie focuses on four Berber soldiers (Algerians, Tunisians and Moroccan goumiers) and their pied noir (African-born French). The shortest and most naïve is Saïd (Jamel Debbouze, Amélie), the naïve shepherd whose mother begs him not to enlist. The tallest and most articulate, and the only literate one is Corporal Abdelkader (Sami Bouajila considerably more grizzled than in “The Adventures of Felix" but just as compelling).

The enlistment by Yassir (Samy Naceri) is mercenary, and he assiduously takes whatever he might be able to sell from German corpses. (He wants money so his younger brother can marry, not money for himself. Though not altruistic, his seeming greed is familial rather than self-serving)

The romantic,  Messaoud (Roschdy Zem) with a tattoo on his chest proclaiming “pas de fortune” (luckless), wants to remain in France and is the one with a romance, albeit one that is thwarted by military censors who embargo his mail to and from his Marseilles sweetheart. Plus Sgt. Martinez (Bernard Blanca), a WWI veteran career soldier, whose mother was Arab, a fact he keeps secret, but which his orderly figures out, infuriating the sergeant.

The goumiers bleed copiously for la patria (France), but are not promoted, not given home leave, and even refused fresh tomatoes that the white French troops enjoy. Corporal Abdelkader speaks out against every injustice, and it is no surprise that Bouajila returns with a character having the same name in Bouchareb’s “Hors La Loi” (Outside the Law, 2010) that shows the Algerian independence struggle (and also has Jamel Debbouze as a character named Saïd, Roschdy Zem as another one named Messaoud), and Bernard Blancan has made colonel (a running line/ambition in “Indigenes”).

Articulate as he is of rage at second-class “citizen,” Corporal Abdelkader is also very determined to show the exceptional valor of the Arabs (to the French who folded quickly at the start of the war and collaborated with the Nazis with an eagerness French historical memory and media have been eager to skip over…). Such “glory” as was proclaimed was purloined by the European French. (For American viewers like me who consider that despite some politic forefronting of French soldiers, as in the entry into Paris, American, Canadian, and English troops drove the Germans out of France, the French bombast seems vainglory even without consideration of the colonial troops taking more risks and casualties… Also, the boots and uniforms of the French Expeditionary Force wwere supplied by the US.)

Only one of the four was a crack shot, so it is surprising that all four are marksmen far superior to the Germans! This, too, I've seen before, many, many times, not just in Hollywood war movies, but in westerns and crime/police movies in which professional gunmen fail multiple times to hit their target, while our plucky heroes never miss their targets...

Considering that the combat action has been done so many times before, it is the tensions within the ranks that makes the movie interesting. The five leads as an ensemble won the best actor award at Cannes (Bouchareb received the François Chalais Award there, and shared a César for best original screenplay, along with the best foreign-language film nomination).

I thought that the 20-something-minute “making of” featurette was interesting. One or two grandfathers of each of the four French Arab leads fought for France during WWII and the actors were very committed to showing the forgotten history of their families. Writer-director Rachid Bouchareb had been trying to make the movie for more than a decade, but could not get financial backing until the French Arab actors (one of whom does not speak Arabic) had established themselves.

In addition to providing a source of pride to often denigrated grandchildren of soldiers in the French Expeditionary Force (see "La Haine"), the movie seems to have accomplished something. In 1959, the French government ceased paying military pensions to veterans from countries that declared independence. In 2001 a law reinstated the pensions… but without any allocation of funds. The movie seems to have shamed the government and payments finally resumed in 2007.

It is the naïve character, Saïd who proclaims: “If I free a country, it’s my country. Even if I’ve never seen it before, it’s my country.” There seem to be many French who do not agree with him (and Americans who oppose citizenship for Latinos fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is impossible not to add; not that there is any lack of parallels of fighting in segregated US units to fight the racist Nazis and returning to second-class citizenship after victory... along with the long delay in recognizing the service in the Pacific War of men from the US colony of the Philipinnes...).


The widescreen battle scenes and aerial shots of each new locale are good, the acting is very good, and the recuperation of historical memory is worthy, but as a movie, we’ve seen everything except the specifically Arab soldiers denied liberty, equality, and fraternity with their European purported “brothers in arms” before many times, and striving soldiers from stigmatized minorities (African-American, Japanese-American, Native American, etc.) at least a few times.

The making-of feature rounded my 3.3 evaluation of the movie as a movie up. There is also a cartoon “The Colonial Friend” that Bouchareb made, but which was only partially playable on the copy I tried to watch.

©2010, Stephen O. Murray

Recommended: Yes