1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 60: Un héros très discret (A self-made hero)
Albert grows up thinking his father died fighting for France in World War I. Probably not; probably, his mother lied to him. During the next war, the Nazis capture their village. The village officials welcome the Nazis. Albert’s mother discreetly collaborates with the Nazis so that she can receive the pension for war widows. Then the Nazis are driven out and the village officials welcome the liberators. The Nazis’ French collaborators are rounded up and dealt with. Albert’s mother is spared the worst treatment, however: Albert’s father-in-law has been sheltering Allied parachutists in his barn, and the whole family is protected by, indeed profits from, this clandestine heroism. Albert is humiliated that neither his father-in-law nor his wife saw fit to inform him that good deeds were being done. He hops on a train to Paris. There he falls in with a con artist and an unscrupulous businessman. He learns to inflate his credentials, rehearse catchphrases, and recall names. By dropping the right words into conversation, he insinuates himself into the postwar in-crowd. Its celebrities are the former Resistance fighters. Albert attends their gatherings and pretends to have been a Resistance fighter. He fits right in. The Resistance fighters also name-drop, and he can do it better than they can. He studies English phrases and street names and pretends to have been exiled in London. When he pretends to have been sired by a Polish Jew, his star rises especially high. Eventually, he impresses the right people and is given a prestigious army job.
He works hard at being an impostor. All the while, he is racked with guilt.
The story is sordid and tragic and brightly and cheerfully told.
This impostor’s tale is designed to make every honest viewer worry whether, or to what degree, he or she also is an impostor. It also develops a subtler theme. Is society responsible for incentivizing the deception that Albert practices? Yes, and for turning a blind eye to it. Consider Albert’s wife, and his mistress. Both suspect that something about him is screwy. Neither is especially bothered. They see potential in his talent for self-presentation. Consider the virtuous father-in-law, the one who heroically hides the parachutists in his barn. Deep down, he must not trust Albert; but he trains him in his salesman’s craft. By turning Albert into a disciplined performer, he helps him down the road to impostorship. Consider the soldiers and Resistance fighters. Some are clearly fooled by Albert. Others clearly are not. Most leave it ambiguous whether or not they are fooled. The prevailing attitude seems to be: Let’s see how far this guy will travel; let’s see how useful he can be to us. Hardly surprising, in a society that exalts Nazis or Resistance fighters according to who it is who happens to have the upper hand.
Throughout the movie, various men engage in homosexual flirtations toward Albert. I don’t believe that Albert is a closeted or latent homosexual. The sexual flirtation is a metaphor for a different kind of flirtation: I know what you’re really up to, but I’m going to let you get away with it because I can capitalize on it. The dance of sex is a dance of social advancement, or, in some cases, of social rebellion. Put your wedding dress back on, Albert tells his bride after they have consummated their marriage. Albert, the fraud, wants to recover the idea of purity, of transparency. His bride, who really is pure, is attracted to his deceptiveness. She won’t be the last to regard him in this way. Albert is a self-made “hero,” and a discreet one; and it is a discreet society that quietly calculates whether such a fraud as Albert can be allowed to pass for a hero.
He works hard at being an impostor. All the while, he is racked with guilt.
The story is sordid and tragic and brightly and cheerfully told.
This impostor’s tale is designed to make every honest viewer worry whether, or to what degree, he or she also is an impostor. It also develops a subtler theme. Is society responsible for incentivizing the deception that Albert practices? Yes, and for turning a blind eye to it. Consider Albert’s wife, and his mistress. Both suspect that something about him is screwy. Neither is especially bothered. They see potential in his talent for self-presentation. Consider the virtuous father-in-law, the one who heroically hides the parachutists in his barn. Deep down, he must not trust Albert; but he trains him in his salesman’s craft. By turning Albert into a disciplined performer, he helps him down the road to impostorship. Consider the soldiers and Resistance fighters. Some are clearly fooled by Albert. Others clearly are not. Most leave it ambiguous whether or not they are fooled. The prevailing attitude seems to be: Let’s see how far this guy will travel; let’s see how useful he can be to us. Hardly surprising, in a society that exalts Nazis or Resistance fighters according to who it is who happens to have the upper hand.
Throughout the movie, various men engage in homosexual flirtations toward Albert. I don’t believe that Albert is a closeted or latent homosexual. The sexual flirtation is a metaphor for a different kind of flirtation: I know what you’re really up to, but I’m going to let you get away with it because I can capitalize on it. The dance of sex is a dance of social advancement, or, in some cases, of social rebellion. Put your wedding dress back on, Albert tells his bride after they have consummated their marriage. Albert, the fraud, wants to recover the idea of purity, of transparency. His bride, who really is pure, is attracted to his deceptiveness. She won’t be the last to regard him in this way. Albert is a self-made “hero,” and a discreet one; and it is a discreet society that quietly calculates whether such a fraud as Albert can be allowed to pass for a hero.