ABSTRACT
The French, it is often argued, long coped with their traumatic colonial past by repressing troubling memories. A rival view holds that empire was crucial to French national identity and that decolonization caused a crisis of national confidence and morale. A 1945 law required films to secure visas from a committee of bureaucrats and film industry figures. Opening in June 1962, the film sold a paltry 49,933 tickets. These figures might suggest French viewers’ wish to avoid a painful topic, but this slow-paced, low-budget film with no stars received little advertising or promotion, and in Paris, it played three art-houses. After the war ended in Algeria, censorship eased enough to allow the release of several films about Indochina, beginning in 1963 with Leo Joannon’s Fort du Fou. The Indochina films Fort du Fou, La 317e Section and Le Facteur s’en Va-t-en Guerre all sold well over a million tickets, while the films on Algeria did weaker business.
