''Le petit soldat'' () is a French film, written and directed by

French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...

filmmaker

Jean-Luc Godard Jean-Luc Godard ( , ; ; 3 December 193013 September 2022) was a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter, and film critic. He rose to prominence as a pioneer of the French New Wave film movement of the 1960s, alongside such filmmakers as Fran ...

in 1960, but not released until 1963. It was Godard's third film released with

Anna Karina Anna Karina (born Hanne Karin Blarke Bayer; September 22, 1940 – December 14, 2019)

, who starred as Véronica Dreyer alongside

Michel Subor Michel Subor (, born Mischa Subotzki; 2 February 1935 – 17 January 2022) was a French actor who gained initial fame with the starring role in Jean-Luc Godard's second feature, '' Le petit soldat'' (1960), but the French government banned it un ...

(as Bruno Forestier).

Plot

During the

Algerian War The Algerian War, also known as the Algerian Revolution or the Algerian War of Independence,( ar, الثورة الجزائرية '; '' ber, Tagrawla Tadzayrit''; french: Guerre d'Algérie or ') and sometimes in Algeria as the War of 1 November ...

, Bruno Forestier lives in

Geneva Geneva ( ; french: Genève ) frp, Genèva ; german: link=no, Genf ; it, Ginevra ; rm, Genevra is the second-most populous city in Switzerland (after Zürich) and the most populous city of Romandy, the French-speaking part of Switzerland. Situa ...

to escape the enlistment in France. Working for

La Main Rouge ''La Main Rouge'' ( en, The Red Hand) was a French terrorist organization operated by the French foreign intelligence agency ( External Documentation and Counter-Espionage Service), or SDECE, in the 1950s. Its purpose was to eliminate the supporte ...

, he is ordered to kill Palivoda, who is pro- FLN (National Liberation Front of Algeria), to prove he is not a

double agent In the field of counterintelligence, a double agent is an employee of a secret intelligence service for one country, whose primary purpose is to spy on a target organization of another country, but who is now spying on their own country's organ ...

. Refusal and hesitation keep him from carrying out the assassination. Meanwhile, he meets and falls in love with Véronica Dreyer, who helped the FLN. Bruno plans to leave with her for

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

but is captured and tortured by Algerian revolutionaries. He escapes and agrees to kill Palivoda for the French in exchange for passage to Brazil for himself and Véronica. However, the French discover Véronica's ties to the FLN and torture her to death.

Themes

The situation in Algeria and the

denunciation Denunciation (from Latin ''denuntiare'', "to denounce") is the act of publicly assigning to a person the blame for a perceived wrongdoing, with the hope of bringing attention to it. Notably, centralized social control in authoritarian states re ...

of the use of

torture Torture is the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on a person for reasons such as punishment, extracting a confession, interrogation for information, or intimidating third parties. Some definitions are restricted to acts ...

by both sides are the main themes of the movie. The film explores a theme typical of Jean-Luc Godard's later works: the nature of cinema and the image.

Release

The film was banned in France until January 1963 because of its inclusion of torture scenes. This was Godard's second feature film (after '' À bout de souffle'') but was released as his fourth. This is the first of Godard's movies to star Anna Karina, who became his wife soon after filming. She would go on to become the quintessential Godard actress.

Reception

''Le petit soldat'' has received generally positive reviews since release; review aggregator

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wan ...

reports 80% approval among 15 critics. In a retrospective review,

Roger Ebert Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...

awarded it a full four stars.

References

External links

* *
Review of DVD of ''Le Petit Soldat''

Roger Ebert review of ''Le Petit Soldat''

''Le petit soldat: The Awful Truth''
an essay by Nicholas Elliott at

The Criterion Collection The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home video, home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films." Criterion serves film and media scho ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Petit Soldat, Le 1960 films Algerian War films French black-and-white films Films directed by Jean-Luc Godard Cold War films Fiction about the Organisation armée secrète Torture in films 1960s French-language films