'L'affiche rouge' (1976) (the English title is 'The Red Poster') is the first of the films about the Manouchian or the Red Poster case - one of the most dramatic episodes and a rather controversial moment in the history of the French Resistance. It was made a little more than three decades after the Second World War, at a time when many of the survivors of the anti-fascist struggle but also some of the collaborators were still alive, a time when the less idealized historical details of the Resistance and the occupation were just beginning to come to light after decades of silence and secrecy. The director and co-writer of the film is Frank Cassenti, an interesting personality who started as a documentarian and politically engaged director ('L'affiche rouge' being part of this period) to continue and establish himself as a TV movies director, passionate expert in music and author of films about and with music. 'L'affiche rouge' shows courage and inventiveness, in many ways it can be considered as an experimental or avant-garde film, but with a clear political orientation and involvement.
The Manouchian group wrote one of the most spectacular and heroic page in the history of the French Resistance. They are credited with the assassination, on September 28, 1943, of General Julius Ritter, one of those responsible for the mobilization and deportation of slave laborers in Nazi-occupied Europe and with almost thirty other attacks against the objectives of the German occupiers between August and November 1943. They were arrested in circumstances not elucidated to this day, but this film did not refer to this controversial part, which was be covered by other works later. What distinguished the Manouchian group from other Resistance formations was the fact that most of the members of this group of heroes of France were foreigners. Missak Manouchian was an Armenian poet and survivor of the 1915 genocide. Many others in the group were Jews from Eastern Europe. Most of them had met in Spain, during the civil war, where they had fought on the side of the anti-fascist republicans. All were men with one exception - Olga Bancic, a Jewish woman born in Romania. She was the last woman executed by beheading in Europe. During my childhood in communist Romania, Olga Bancic was considered a heroine, streets were named after her and she was also mentioned in school history books. The fact that she was Jewish was omitted. It was precisely this ethnic aspect that was at the core of the way in which the occupiers, but also history, referred to this case. The film describes how the German occupiers used the fighters' ethnicity to stigmatize them as 'non-French', organizing a public trial and preparing propaganda materials, including the (in)famous red poster. After the war, the French were the ones who for a long time minimized the fact that one of the most active and effective networks fighting against the occupiers was made up of foreigners (or 'metecs' as the French say). History rehabilitated them, but too late.
Frank Cassenti's film is not a docu-drama. The director was more concerned with how the heroes of the Resistance and their actions were viewed and reflected during the time the film was made. 30 years had passed and some of the historical facts were already forgotten. Whether the oblivion was just the effect of time or also the result of overshadowing inconvenient details - is a question that is left to the viewers to answer. The pretext that works well cinematically is the staging in a public space, of a 'commedia dell'arte' type show dedicated to the events of the war and their heroes. It is the occasion for some beautiful 'theatre in film' scenes. Several of the survivors meet the young actors, from another generation, who try to understand the heroes they will play. The transition from the present to the past is smooth, sometimes in the same scene. The past infiltrates without us feeling it in the present which had begun to forget. A beautiful idea from a filmmaker who had a lot to say. Even if not all the details are chiseled to the end, even if the characters are just snapshots, devoid of depth, 'Laffiche rouge' is an interesting film which transmits a double lesson - about history and about the reflection of history in history.
