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Terrorists In Retirement

1984, Movie, NR, 84 mins

Terrorists In Retirement: Review

TERRORISTS IN RETIREMENT | DES
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A short, deeply troubling investigation of the events leading up to the arrest and subsequent execution of some 200 immigrant Resistance fighters in Occupied Paris. The incident centered on the 23-members of the Manouchian Group, executed in 1944 and immortalized on "L'Affiche Rouge," the ubiquitous red poster that proclaimed a Nazi victory over "terrorists." Missak Manouchian was the Paris head of the F.T.P.-M.O.I., an important arm of the Resistance organized under the aegis of the French Communist Party. Its member were young and predominantly Jewish; many were illegal immigrants. Of all the Resistance cells, they had the least to lose: Many French Jews had already been rounded up and deported to concentration camps. So when the time came for assassinations and sabotage, the Party turned to the M.O.I. Director Mosco Boucault interviews a handful of surviving M.O.I. members, and, bizarrely, has them recreate their clandestine activities on Paris streets. Their stories are inspiring, exciting and — considering the impoverished obscurity in which these heroic figures now live — infuriating. But the film becomes doubly so when Boucault turns his unblinking gaze toward the fate of the Manouchian Group. Accounts conflict and the evidence is inconclusive, but the implications are clear: In November 1943, 200 members of F.T.P.-M.O.I were left to their doom when their names became known to the Gestapo and the French police. Were they simply abandoned by the Party high command, or deliberately sacrificed in what one historian asserts was an effort to purge the Party of names and faces deemed somewhat less than French? Either way, the film raises some unsettling questions about France's attitude toward its own history (made for French television in 1984, it was pulled under pressure from the French Communist Party and surviving Resistance members) while highlighting the enormous — and generally ignored — contribution made by France's immigrants during that country's darkest hour. leave a comment --Ken Fox
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