It's a Great Story, But Is It History?
The hallowed Greatest Generation is a tent big enough to include even the French, so long as they're resistance fighters striking back against their Nazi oppressors. But is America ready to include soldiers who are both Frenchmen and Arab Muslims? This is the brief for "Days of Glory," a massive World War II film about France's colonial forces — mostly North African Muslims — who fought in the vineyards of Provence and Italy to liberate a motherland that had never given them anything but grief.
The sons of France's colonies who died for liberty, equality, and fraternity didn't receive nearly the number of promotions, days off, or fresh tomatoes as their white comrades in arms, according to "Days," and they even got stiffed on their pensions after the war. Directed by Rachid Bouchareb, the movie is a cinematic corrective, more of a petition you should sign than a movie you should enjoy. Mr. Bouchareb subscribes wholeheartedly to the notion that a film about World War II should be extensively researched, naturalistically acted, and totally identical to every other World War II movie that came before.
When war movies focus on ethnic minorities, the goal is to show that they're just like all the other soldiers. Mission accomplished as far as this film is concerned, but by proving that the Arab soldiers were just like other fighting grunts, the filmmakers also make their movie just like every other movie.
Is there a fistful of characters, each with a single quirk to make him unique? Check. Is there a tough but fair superior officer? Check. Do elegiac strings summon flocks of angels while we witness man's inhumanity to man? Check. Do we catch up to the lone survivor 60 years later so he can weep softly while running his hands over his buddies' tombstones in a military graveyard? Check.
"Days of Glory" is not a bad movie. The battle scenes are actually far more coherent than those in "Saving Private Ryan," the gold standard for Greatest Generation war porn. And not once is this flick hard on the eyes or ears, but it's nothing you need to think very hard or long about.
It's also a whitewash. The actual history of France's colonial forces is full of accusation and counter-accusation. The movie portrays the Italian campaign as an unvarnished triumph carried out by noble Arabs, but it ignores the alleged aftermath: a rape-and-murder spree conducted against the civilian population and memorialized in Vittoria de Sica's "La Ciociara," which won Sophia Loren an Oscar for Best Actress in 1960.
These alleged atrocities were followed in turn by the execution of hundreds of colonial soldiers, many of whom received no trial and were seemingly convicted for the color of their skin. The French government denies any of this ever happened and it may not have, but there's obviously a far more complex, tragic, and adult tale to be told than the earnest, PC propaganda offered up in "Days of Glory."
