Nuit noire, 17 octobre 1961 (2005 TV Movie) User Reviews

A record of terrible events in Paris - October 1961

[mightyeye · 7/10 · 22 October 2005]

This movie is at the moment being broadcast on the French channel TV5. It shows the events of 17th October 1961 when the police in Paris were ordered to crush brutally a pro Algerian FLN protest against a curfew imposed on Algerians in Paris. What emerged was in short appalling. Police Prefect Papon previously a Vichy boss who was involved in the German expulsion of the French Jews from France. It is thought anything up to 200+ Algerians were murdered in these events, before these events up to 30 police had been murdered by the FLN in Paris hence an urge for revenge existed and was encouraged by the Interior Minister Fey and Prefect Papon. It was perhaps foolish, given these circumstances, for the FLN to engage in demonstrations in Paris given the feelings but it is no excuse for the killings that happened. It is time that these events were officially investigated and those responsible brought to justice whilst they are still alive.

However, whilst it's easy to examine critically the role of the Parisien police in these events and rightly so, we should also remember and have an account of FLN atrocities in Algeria and France.

Well done TV5 for having the courage to show this movie. A movie nicely filmed, good camera work, good acting and continuity, the night scenes in particular are realistic.

A documentary film about the oppression of the Algerians living in France in the early 60's

[haboe · 8/10 · 10 November 2005]

In the aftermath of the colonial empire of France there were severe riots between the Algerians (living in France) who wanted to be independent and the French government. This documentary gives a shocking view of the more or less open racial behaviour of the French police of those days and the cover-up that the French authorities made.

I think it's very good that modern day filmmakers chose these these subjects because the effects of the colonial history of Europe still influences todays news. Such films give us insight in our history. I hope they will help us to understand why things are the way they are.

It's not a nice film, but it really grips me.

Worth seeing

[chimpdog · 8/10 · 23 April 2006]

Docudrama shot for French TV, now on the festival circuit. Definitely worth seeing -- much better than the few published reviews (notably the NY Times') suggested. It's an ingenious counterpart to the rediscovered gem "Battle of Algiers." Although the first-time director cites some rather pedestrian filmmakers as his role models, he's significantly more skillful than they are. The camera keeps moving. The scenes crackle with tension. The staging and editing have a contemporary pacing, although the production design provides an authentic period feel.

Maybe Manolha Dargis was out buying popcorn, but this film doesn't shrink from making moral indictments. It shows racist, trigger-happy police shooting unarmed, nonviolent demonstrators. Again and again. These scenes have almost the accusatory tone of a Holocaust documentary. Still, the film acknowledges complexity -- sketching several morally conflicted characters.

Looks like it was shot in high-definition video (not film), but still looks good projected. The muted nighttime colors look convincingly like film stock from 1961.

An important document of the legacy of French colonialism

[mcnally · 8/10 · 28 January 2006]

I saw this film at the 2005 Toronto International Film Festival. Another gut-wrenching portrayal of some of the shameful events perpetrated during the Algerian war, this film is an important document of the legacy of French colonialism.

On the night of October 17, 1961, more than 20,000 Algerians gathered in Paris for a peaceful demonstration against French rule of their homeland. It wasn't entirely spontaneous. In fact, the FLN (the main group advocating for Algerian independence) required all Algerian men to participate. It was to be a show of solidarity to bolster the ongoing negotiations between the FLN and the French government. Instead, it turned into a massacre. The police were already living in a climate of fear and repressed anger due to the ongoing campaign of random assassinations of police officers. And the police leadership were eager for a crackdown to avoid further humiliation. As the demonstrators gathered in various districts, police immediately moved in to arrest thousands, and after some confusing reports of being fired upon, themselves fired upon and then charged the crowds. There is no official report on the number of dead, but it was somewhere between 50 and 200. More than 40 years later, there has never been an official acknowledgement of the events of that night.

Noted television director Alain Tasma spent two years gathering evidence and reconstructing the events leading up to the massacre, and he presents a straightforward account that manages to capture the rising tension keenly. The film is a sort of parallel to the events portrayed in the classic film The Battle of Algiers, and Tasma owes a lot to the techniques and pacing of that forty-year-old masterpiece. With the exception of that film, most "issue" films rarely rise above their sense of moral outrage, and October 17, 1961 (more evocatively entitled "Nuit Noire" in its native France) is not a masterpiece. But it does capture the feeling of a time not so long ago, a feeling which is eerily present again in the rising Islamophobia of many Western democracies.