LE COMBAT DANS L’ÎLE (1962)
Directed by Alain Cavalier
Produced by Louis Malle
Written by Jean-Paul Rappeneau
Released by Film Desk
French with English subtitles
France. 104 min. Not Rated
With Jean-Louis Trintignant, Romy Schneider, Henri Serre & Maurice Garrel
 

In the same way The Battle of Algiers’ depiction of colonialism and counterinsurgency is as relevant today as it was in 1965, Le combat dans l'île’s representation of right-wing fanaticism is just as incisive, regardless of the cultural and historical differences between France then and America now. With the assassination of abortion provider Dr. George Tiller by an anti-government, anti-choice reactionary and the attack on the Holocaust Memorial Museum by a white supremacist—not to mention the Homeland Security report that warns of the possibility of rising right-wing violence in the wake of Obama’s election—the rerelease of 1962’s Le combat dans l'île’s couldn’t be more apropos, working as a deft psychological account of the kinds of people that perform these acts.

A wide swath of the plot focuses on Clément (Jean-Louis Trintignant) and his dealings with a mysterious right-wing militia. The aims and philosophy of the group are shunted to the background in order to concentrate on Clément. Even when his own thread veers off, allowing other characters to come into full view, the legacy of his actions drives the plot. In this way, Le combat dans l'île is mostly about a man-child, an adolescent in adult trappings, and how he lashes out at a world he doesn’t comprehend. That incomprehension materializes through violence, like a petulant child throwing a tantrum.

Clément’s obtuseness comes out of impatience. He comes from money, and instead of learning about a world that doesn’t conform to his beliefs, he reacts angrily to its foreignness, trying instead to force it to fall in line with his worldview. He hits his wife when she acts contrary to his wishes, he assassinates political leaders with whom he disagrees, and he murders a fellow reactionary and goes on the lam when a simpler solution would have sufficed. Clément is a perfect symbol for the puerility of the right-wing fringe, and director Alain Cavalier contextualizes this childishness without ever becoming heavy-handed or didactic.

To interpret the film as merely a character study though would be to ignore the way it vacillates from genre to genre and mood to mood, first a political thriller then a romantic drama, then a western and a noir. The momentum never jars as each fragment naturally emerges from the last. Different plots threads abut each other, from Clément’s attempts to assassinate a politician to the dissolution of his marriage to Anne (Romy Schneider). However, Cavalier never allows the whole to become incoherent or unwieldy, reining the entire production in under a very methodical style.

While the political connections to our current situation are what is truly of intellectual interest, the protean plot and the honest characterizations make Le combat dans l'île more than just some archival trifle. Whatever political point there is to make, it is a function of the characters and not an artificial idea forced on the proceedings. In that way, Cavalier’s patience and understanding are almost political arguments in their own right. Andrew Beckerman
June 23, 2009