Le Petit Soldat

Bruno--a down in luck hit man for a French anti-terrorist group in the midst of the Algerian War—is full of complexities that eventually lead to trouble. Bruno is rethinking his assignment to murder a certain man, and simply cannot bring himself to take action. On his first day of murder attempts Bruno would hesitate every time he had an open shot. Soon after he was captured by the Arabs and tortured. Like a good soldier, Bruno did not give them the information they required (the address of the French group he worked for). Even though he did not give up the information, he was soon betrayed by the very group he was protecting. He killed the man he did not want to kill, they did not fulfill their promises of two passports and they murdered Veronica (Anna Karina).

This was Godard’s second film—made in 1960 but not released until 1963. Here starts his obsession with Anna Karina. Beautifying and worshipping her with the camera, Karina is the only form of aesthetic beauty through the ugly portrait of the underground street gang version of a war. However, Bruno was betrayed and almost tricked by this beauty. The entire time Veronica was working for the Arabs—and once dated a man who helped torture Bruno. He eventually discovered her betrayal, forgave her and trusted her. In fact, he was forced to kill because of her. At the end of the film, I believe Bruno states “It was the woman”, or it was the woman that made me kill. A woman’s betrayal and love may have portrayed Godard’s personal relationship with Anna Karina.

Godard had a raw and rustic shooting style. As far as I could tell he did not use a studio and shot the entire film on the street. I was also intrigued with the sound. Whenever a conversation was taking place there was zero background noise—even when the characters were driving through the busy streets. This allowed the viewer to pay more attention to the dialogue—making every conversation important.

All around I enjoyed the film, but wish I knew more about the Algerian war. I also liked the undertones throughout the film—i.e the newspaper with Hitler’s photo on the front page.