Mein Freund, der Verräter

"Mon ami le traitre" is perhaps ,along with "le rapace" (1968) ,Jose Giovanni's best work.Had Lucien Lacombe (Louis Malle's hero in the 1973 eponymous movie)survived,that's what he might have become when the Liberation came in 1944.Like Lucien,Georges entered the Collaboration BY CHANCE.He was a lout,having been sentenced to jail before the war.He had mitigating circumstances:his brother was a hunchback,mistreated by his schoolmates.

Whereas "le Bosco" (his brother) commits suicide when the allies come to France,Georges tries to redeem himself :he meets a counter-espionage officer and offers his service to break up the last French nazi circles.In a nutshell,he becomes a stool pigeon.You often feel ill-at-ease when you watch that.French sometimes turn into torturers like their former occupying forces.Hatred oozes through the whole movie,as women who slept with Germans are cropped and the crowds applause when a militiaman is shot.Sometimes the audience is bewildered and is no more able to tell good from evil:the officer's (André Dussolier) attitude,and even more,his superior's are beyond any moral."Troubled times " the colonel tersely says.

In the last pictures,Giovanni makes us share his disgust with death penalty (which he had already shown in "deux hommes dans la ville" (1972) and which he would come back to in his final work "mon père" (2001).He and Andre Cayatte were directors who certainly contributed to the abolishment of the capital punishment in France in 1981.

If you loved LACOMBE LUCIEN, the Louis Malle's masterpiece from 1973, you should also enjoy this one, directed by the French Samuel Fuller - José Giovanni. I say Samuel Fuller because Giovanni was a writer, novelist, who adapted many of his own books: L'Excommunie, UN NOMME LA ROCCA and LA SCOUMOUNE; Histoire de Fou, LE GITAN.; Les Ruffians, LES RUFFIANS, Mon Ami le Traitre, MON AMI LE TRAITRE; Les Loups Entre Eux, LES LOUPS ENTRE EUX; Il Avait dans le Coeur des Jardins Introuvables, IL AVAIT DANS LE COEUR DES JARDINS INTROUVABLES...Samuel Fuller was nearly the same, concerning SHOCK CORRIDOR, DEAD PIDGEON ON BEETHOVEN STREET and THE BIG RED ONE. Besides this Giovanni and Fuller were not the same kind of guys...That said this movie proposes an intersting story which can remind LACOMBE LUCIEN, but without the very same scheme. The lead character is anything but a true hero, and precisely for this reason it is very interesting, worth to watch. It shows something rarely seen before. Thierry Frémont is awesome here, in this so ambivalent role.