The plot description on top of the page is incorrect. This is not a comedy, NOT about 'an Englishman arrives in America'. This is a serious, tragic, documentary style drama. Paul Dupré (Ian Hendry), a French police undercover from Paris, arrives in Alger, gets in touch with Mme Eliane de Croissillon whose father (Eric Portman) is a doctor. Paul told Eliane he came to Alger to conduct archaeological research in a museum. His real purpose is to investigate the murderous activities of an ultranationalist French organisation after reading the reports of a number of French persons killed in execution style. The victims have all been labelled as "traitors" by the executioners. It addresses a problem still ongoing today: white-supremacist vs Islamist.
2 Reviews
The death-throes of the French in Algeria
clanciai28 November 2022
It's Eric Portman's performance that makes this film worth watching and carefully. It's a grim drama of the last days of French presence and rule in Algeria, when all sensible Frenchmen moved out of there and went home to France, while those stayed on who felt bound by their duties of profession and as citizens of some responsibility to ignore the risks of alarmingly hysterical and exaggerated politics to carry on their job as usual. Eric Portman is a doctor in Algiers since 30 years with an immaculate sense of integrity and duty to his patients, Arabs or French or whatever, who finds himself accused of treason because of unconfirmed medical assistance to so called terrorists. He eloquently presents his defense at an illegal improvised court underground run by nationalists but is not allowed to conclude it. His major prosecutor is a former medical student of his, whom he warns he will never become a doctor. Others are involved also, his daughter above all, who has a friend recently arrived from France on a secret investigation mission to find out what is going on among the fishy activities of the nationalists verging on desperation, while her husband is one of them. Doctor Sorel (Eric Portman) is repeatedly warned even from the beginning of the film about the peril of his position, but he sticks to what he feels is right as a free human individual. In some way the drama is a sinister anatomy of racism, and the issues presented are valid for all times. This was one of Eric Portman's last performances and definitely one of permanence for posterity.
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