Nada

An anarchist group called Nada kidnap the American ambassador in a high class Paris brothel. The state then counter this by giving the chief of police license to deal with the situation. The state proves to be more brutal than the terrorists.

This is a pretty atypical film from Claude Chabrol. While it deals with moral ambiguity, which many of his films do, it also is very directly political which is unusual. Other than the idea that the state can be more amoral than terrorists, I'm not too sure what else the film has to say. The subject matter of Marxist revolutionaries taking radical action is one that would have been much more in vogue in the 70's than now though. Overall, the film lacks the personal feel of Chabrol's more intimate thrillers. The political angle doesn't seem to be material best suited to his style. And as a result Nada is a slightly underwhelming movie.

For nearly a decade, in the late 60s and early 70s, Claude Chabrol was arguably the greatest director in the world, in Europe at any rate. 'Nada' comes from this period, and yet is an exception in the oeuvre. Instead of a claustrophobic thriller in a domestic setting, 'Nada' is about international terrorists running amok through France (in a way, the film is a parody of the previous year's 'Day of the Jackal'). Instead of intricate psychological depth, Chabrol offers pure cartoon. The police are a hangover from the Vichy era, murderously cyncial, while the terrorists are organised by someone who no longer believes in revolution.

As a sophisticated analysis of pressing contemporary events, the whole thing seems rather silly, until you start spotting Chabrol's wicked, misanthropic irony, and you wonder if the old boy hasn't done it after all. Never take Chabrol's glittering surfaces at face value. The massacre scene is deeply cynical, shocking, brilliant cinema.

So far, very few reviewers seem to have grasped what is going on in this film and the rest are floundering. For it is highly local and highly topical, as Chabrol contrasts two poisons then prevalent in French society.

One, more recent, was the evil residue of the unrest in 1968. In France, as in West Germany and Italy, minuscule groups of ex-students mouthing empty slogans took to robbery, extortion and murder in the apparent hope of triggering the collapse of capitalism.

The other, longer lasting, was the even more toxic legacy of successive military defeats. After the defeat by Germany in 1940, the upper levels of the French civil service and police were permeated with men who collaborated in the horrors of the Vichy dictatorship and the Nazi occupation. After the defeat in Algeria in 1962, the army was also infected by the bloody repression of its opponents, real or supposed. Too many men had learned that you got results by ignoring the rules and by resorting to torture and murder.

Chabrol's terrorists are suitably dangerous but bumbling, with only their leader aspiring to some sort of Lucifer status. His cops are terrifying, replicas of the Gestapo that had terrorised France only 30 years earlier, with the diabolical commissaire sporting a hairstyle of the early 1940s while his two goons could easily have been pulling out toenails at that time.

Though placing the story in a highly contemporary setting, as always Chabrol is not making a political statement or giving us a history lesson. His subject is humanity and its flaws.

PS One reviewer warns us not to let our children see this film. Not because of the endemic violence and profanity but because of two brief moments when a woman is shown with no clothes and a man is shown on top of a woman under the bedclothes. Both are intrinsic to the story, as the first glimpse is of a prostitute at her place of work and the second is of a terrorist, who (highly symbolic!) has to admit to the girl that he is impotent. Though it is always admirable to broaden young people's minds, I can't think of a single Chabrol film which could really be appreciated before the age of 18.

A thriller with serious intentions but also with a fast pace and a comic/ironic view of all its characters motivations. The ideas behind the brutal police and the brutal kidnappers are dead serious, but Chabrol shows each side to be rather absurd and many scenes have some odd or funny pay off moment. The main policeman lounges like a goof ball in a chair while they torture a suspect. During the kidnapping one of the kidnappers knocks out a completely naked hooker and at the end of the scene comes back into the room to cover her pubic hair. The dialog is filled with comedic twists throughout. These Little things let us know that these deadly doings are, well silly. If it wasn't that people get killed doing them these people would be laugh out loud funny. That's the point of the tone of the film. It's an additional layer of damnation that most dead serious thrillers forget. The violence in the film is bloody and the message about politics being against all of us and ready to betray anyone, especially if you resort to killing your fellow man is important today. This is one of Chabrol's best films, he makes good use of helicopter views of the assault on the hideout at the end of the film. A well cast film with many parts, but you never get confused as to who is who. There aren't many films that have tried or achieved this combination of elements, one that does come to mind is the excellent TV movie THE DAY REGAN WAS SHOT.

THE NADA GANG (Claude Chabrol - France/Italy 1974).

With this excellent political thriller Claude Chabrol charted into more familiar genre territory. This time he made this cynical account about a small Franch group of post '68 terrorists kidnapping the American ambassador from a luxury Parisian brothel, secreting him away in an isolated farmhouse while they wait for an answer to their demands. But the police chief they're dealing with is even more violent than they are and doesn't care about getting back the hostage alive.

In hindsight this film has become a typical exponent of the - mostly left wing - underground activities in the '70s and 80's. In these modern times, when terrorism is almost exclusively associated with Islamic religiously motivated terrorists, this kind of political activism comes across as refreshingly modern.

While some might consider Nada as somewhat of a disappointment after Chabrol's brilliant series of films, like La femme infidèle (1969) Qua la bête meure (1969), Le Boucher (1970), La Rupture (1970) and Juste avant la nuit (1971), this remains cool, stylish and exciting film-making of the kind very few directors can match. And what about Fabio Testi in his black leather overcoat? Is he the coolest looking criminal you've ever seen, or what?

Camera Obscura --- 8/10