Mediocreté de la presse!
La mediocreté de la presse en Occident est legendaire, surtout lorsque ca touche l'histoire de l'Afrique du Nord. Meme aux bureaux de Washington Post, aucun reasearch serieux.
Quelqu'un aurait-il le temps d'ecrire un petit mot en Anglais a ce journal?
Admirez l'amalgame:
http://www.washtimes.com/entertainment/20070222-091610-2876r.htm
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Arab fighters gain 'Glory'
By Kelly Jane Torrance
February 23, 2007
It might be hard to believe now, but Muslims and Christians once fought
side by side to defeat what both saw as a common enemy.
You'd be forgiven for not knowing this. While there have been many,
many films about World War II, the story of the North Africans who
fought for France has been little told.
"Days of Glory" ("Indigenes") rights this wrong -- and another.
French President Jacques Chirac recently announced that the pensions of
foreign soldiers who served in the French army will finally be made
equal to those of French soldiers. The reported reason for this change
of heart is that he was moved by a private screening of this film.
It's easy to see why he found "Days of Glory" so affecting. Any
didacticism in the film -- and there is some -- is forgotten as soon as
one gets lost in the storytelling.
"Days of Glory," an international co-production in Arabic and
French, is up for a best foreign film Oscar (officially as an Algerian
entry) this Sunday. The film follows a group of Algerian, Moroccan and
Tunisian men, a small part of the 130,000 Africans and North Africans
who helped liberate France from the Germans.
Perhaps the weakest part of the film is motivation -- it's never
really clear why the five central volunteers enlisted. Not one of them
had even set foot in France.
Moroccan brothers Yassir (Samy Naceri) and Larbi (Assaad Bouab) say
it's the money. There's a hint it's also why young Algerian Said (Jamel
Debbouze) joined. His family lives in abject poverty, but he tells his
mother, "I want to help France," after he hears a man marching through
the town in 1943 declaring, "We must wash the French flag with our blood!"
Less apparent is why Algerians Messaoud (Roschdy Zem) and
Abdelkader (Sami Bouajila) joined. Messaoud comes to value the new world
to which he gets exposed -- but he couldn't know he would fall in love
with a Frenchwoman. ("Ever slept in sheets before?" he responds when
another soldier asks him why he plans to settle in France after the war.)
Abdelkader is the most educated -- and ambitious -- of the bunch.
The corporal can read and write, unlike most of the North Africans. He
hopes to make colonel one day, but it soon becomes apparent that
Frenchmen are always promoted above foreigners.
That's the least of the indignities. Fresh tomatoes, for example,
are only for Frenchmen. So is the opportunity to take leave to visit
loved ones. Abdelkader tells the uneducated, poor Said that the army
means equality -- in his uniform, he's the equal of the others. The rest
of the film shows up his naivete.
Abdelkader is more of a patriot than the French themselves when he
tells the men they must fight for their right to those French ideals of
"liberty, equality, and above all, fraternity."
The film is told in a series of vignettes until the men reach
Alsace. What holds the film together is the utter realism of the
performances. The ensemble cast shared the best actor honor at Cannes,
and it was well deserved. These men aren't saints -- like those of any
other races, some are brutes and some are not. But while they fought to
liberate France from one racist enemy, it seemed they faced another.
Rachid Bouchareb, a French director of Algerian descent, has done that
rare thing -- made a moving film that has also, in its way, changed the
world.
