Between 1969 and 1972 filmmaker Costa-Gavras and actor Yves Montand teamed up for three compelling political thrillers, two of which, The Confession (1970) and State of Siege (1972) have just been released in excellent new special editions from the Criterion Collection. Criterion had previously issued Z (1969).
Costa-Gavras, born in Greece in 1933 (as Konstantinos Gavras) learned his craft at the national film school in Paris. A university education was not possible in his home country due to his father’s blacklisting: the elder Gavras had fought with the leftists against the Nazi occupation and then (on the losing side) in the Greek Civil War, decimating the family’s prospects and position. In France Costa-Gavras found work as a trainee director, and in 1965 made his first film, The Sleeping Car Murders, starring his friends Simone Signoret and Yves Montand. Signoret and Montand, each a major star, married in 1951 and remained so until her death in 1985. (The marriage had its ups and downs, as Montand was not inclined to resist the charms of his co-stars on location. Or, as Signoret once mused about one very public liaison, “do you know many men who would sit still with Marilyn Monroe in their arms?”) But let’s talk about the movies. Montand, originally a popular singer, saw his film career take off after his performance in Henri-Gorges Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear (1953), and he would go on to deliver unfailingly impeccable performances for some of France’s greatest directors – my favorites are La Guerre est Finie (Resnais, 1966), Le Circle Rouge (Melville, 1970), and Vincent, François, Paul and the Others (Sautet, 1974).
Z
Released in the troubled, heady days of 1969, Z was an international sensation. Based on the assassination of a liberal Greek politician in 1963 (and the subsequent cover-up and investigation), the film, shot in Algeria, was inevitably banned by the military junta that ruled Greece from 1967-1974. Montand, as the noble, brave, and perhaps naïvely idealistic politician (think Victor Lazlo in Casablanca) doesn’t make it much past the first third of the film; Jean-Louis Trintignant carries the balance of the narrative as the investigating judge determined to uncover the truth. (Good luck with that.) Tense and riveting (yet not without humor), Z was showered with accolades, receiving Academy Award nominations for director, picture, and screenplay (and winning for Best Foreign Film); it won the Jury Prize at Cannes (Tritingnant also won for best actor), and was hailed as the best film of the year by both the National Society of Film Critics and the New York Film Critics Circle.
Certainly, the film touched a nerve. For Roger Ebert, Z was not so much simply about Greece as it was “a film of our time,” with universal resonance – “for Americans, it is about the My Lai massacre, the killing of Fred Hampton, the Bay of Pigs.” The historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. called it “the most memorable political film of the decade.” But what made Z special, and what makes Z special, it that the politics it captures are timeless, and, perhaps most important, it is a heck of a film. Like most commentators at the time, Schlesinger was eager to quite rightly emphasize that even ardently apolitical viewers would experience “the most absorbing suspense thriller of the year.”
Similarly, The Confession, a movie made in 1970 about events that took place years before that, is also timeless, extraordinary, and (distressingly) all-too-contemporary in its themes. Based on the experiences of a communist Czech government official (Montand – Signoret also stars as his wife) caught up in the brutal Stalinist purges of the 1950s. Montand is subjected to what would today be called “enhanced interrogation techniques” (and if you ever had any doubts as to whether such tactics are torture, this film will put that comforting euphemism to rest), so that he might confess to the treasonous crimes he never committed. The Confession does not have the reputation that Z enjoys (what a difference a year makes – and/or, was there something about this assault on the totalitarian left that the liberal audiences who hissed at the tin-pot Greek junta found less exhilarating?) But the film is worthy of similar praise. Both films were shot by New Wave icon Raoul Coutard (known for his extensive collaborations with Truffaut and Godard), and both adaptations were written by Jorge Semprún. Semprún, a refugee from Franco’s Spain who fought with the French resistance, was eventually captured and held prisoner at the Buchenwald concentration camp. After the War Semprún worked with the exile communities fighting against the Franco regime, which gives added resonance to his screenplay for La Guerre est Finie.
The Confession
State of Siege is a swiftly moving, bracingly shot suspense film—a classic manhunt as the sands run out of the hourglass nail-biter. Remarkably, Costa-Gavras sustains the suspense despite starting the film at the end—we know from the start that despite the frantic search, our man will be found shot dead in a parked car. Inspired by the story of the kidnaping and murder of an American diplomat who may or may not have been responsible for training Latin American police forces in the art of torturing prisoners (no need to reach for “enhanced interrogation” here, these were graphic, old-school techniques), the film was enormously controversial (a screening at the Kennedy Center in Washington was cancelled), as its sympathies are clearly with the leftist rebel movement. Shot in Chile (before Allende was overthrown by General Pinochet’s brutal, bloody, CIA-backed coup), Siege was written Franco Solinas, the Italian communist (and World War Two resistance fighter) who had previously written The Battle of Algiers. With its good guys and bad guys (our movie-rebels are thoughtful, their cause understandable, and their violence left off-screen), Siege risks coming across as simplistic, but is saved by the thrill of its filmmaking and power of Montand’s presence, which brings a depth and complexity that gives the audience a real stake in the action.
State of Siege