Comments | parma_violets: Noir Project #3 - I Saw Ben Barka Get Killed

parma_violets

Noir Project #3 - I Saw Ben Barka Get Killed

Nov 29, 2006 18:02

The opening frames of Serge Le Péron and Saïd Smihi's film I Saw Ben Barka Get Killed are so classically noir that the colour film stock actually looks quite jarring. A group of investigators crowd around a dead body, while a moody jazz score - surely inspired by Miles Davis’s music for the French noir classic Lift to the Scaffold (1958) - plays ( Read more... )

i saw ben barka get killed, john prescott, the black dahlia, tsunami, schindler's list, america, georges franju, catherine breillat, noir project, russia, jean-luc godard, the queen's sister, stephen frears, louis malle, marguerite dumas, nazis, lift to the scaffold, communism, china, sarajevo, the holocaust, the queen, coup!, cambodia, al-qaeda, money, double indemnity, alain resnais, a very social secretary, the man who wasn't there, day for night, sight & sound, liam neeson, simon abkarian, sunset boulevard, francois truffaut, bbc, sin city, bertrand bonello, iran, france, charles berling, ralph fiennes, cia, itv, michael haneke

Comments 3

thermaland November 29 2006, 21:49:54 UTC

Erm I am puzzled. Either the film is very misleading or you must have been a bit sleepy. Ben Barka was a Moroccan, an opponent to King Hassan II rather than France's already vanished colonial rule - though certainly French elements were involved in his kidnapping and murder.

parma_violets November 30 2006, 07:24:09 UTC

Doh! It did assume a certain amount of preknowledge and it has been a few weeks since I saw it - God knows where I'm getting Algeria from, though. I'll change it to something more accurate.

parma_violets November 30 2006, 07:33:34 UTC

Ah yes, there's where I was going wrong - Barka opposed Moroccan intervention in Algeria shortly after that country was liberated from France. These things all sort of gummed together in my head.

Damn facts, though, making me take out a long rant about what an arsehole Michael Haneke is. Not fair.