Le petit soldat (1960)

English title: The Little Soldier

(warning: *mild spoilers*) Geneva, 1958. A member of a rightwing organization refuses to perform an assassination. He is blackmailed into it, but plans to escape to another country. He is kidnapped by the rival leftwing organization and tortured. He later finds out that his girlfriend is part of that leftwing organization. She is kidnapped and tortured by the rightwing organization, which once more demands that the protagonist do the assassination he had earlier refused to do.

This is a very early film of this writer/director, and he was still somewhat bound by a narrative structure, of which he would progressively free himself along his career. Still, it is very evident that he is not interested in psychology, or in plot realism. His notion of a man who deserts from a war and subsequently goes to fight *for* that same war as a terrorist may make sense to him, but I honestly do not see how. Not only that, but he also *refuses* to obey orders within his organization. Why did he join in the first place? Well, apparently he is some kind of romantic hero. A loner who likes poetry and engages in literary quotations and philosophizing at every possible opportunity. And what about his girlfriend? In the first half of the movie she is a somewhat lethargic model from abroad and then she suddenly turns into a dangerous leftwing activist (though she somehow can't shake her lethargic looks). As an essayistic dissertation about political and assorted other themes, framed as a semi-parodic spy thriller, however, the film works reasonably well. It is well filmed and well photographed, and provides an interesting document about its time without being too boring.

Rating: 50