Analysis of the movie “Days of Glory”

The movie “Days of Glory” was directed by Rachid Bouchareb, released in 2007 and is called “Indigènes,” or natives, in French, is able to tell its viewers true story of French colonial rule during the World War II. It starts with the scene where colonial troops are being deployed to serve France they have never seen during its liberation from Nazi occupation, and a complex depiction of their treatment in an army organization prejudiced in favor of the European French. Main characters Saïd, Yassir, Messaoud and Corporal Abdelkader all joined the French army having a goal in mind, whether it’s to stay in France or earn money for their families. The movie shows battles during different years while also focusing on the scenes where the colonial soldiers are treated awfully and absolutely not equally comparing to the French men. “Days of Glory” highlights the discrimination by the French authorities against the colonial soldiers continued as successive French governments froze the war pensions of these indigenous veterans when their countries became independent.

In order for an empire to stay consolidated, it has to keep its colonies whether by force or by making them interested in being a part of Empire. French government was positioning itself as the country whose foundations of French colonial ideology include “assimilation” in first place. These inclusionary promises made by the French were to integrate indigenous societies, mainly soldiers into the administrative and cultural structures of the metropole, and eventually to share one national culture. French government was communicating to its citizens and colonials that a big part and task of their colonial ideology was to overcome the distance – cultural, spatial and racial – that separated France from its colonies. However, in reality those promises became truly exclusionary practices, which the books by R. Fogarty and A. Stoler as well as the movie “Days of Glory” prove. French promises of assimilation were actually advanced forms of exclusion, which made it impossible for colonial soldiers to be fully included in the French nation, and these racial, cultural, religious tensions based on an infinitive number of stereotypes contributed to decolonization and eventually fall of the French empire.

The movie “Days of Glory” has multiple scenes, which demonstrate these tensions and problems within French colonial rule so explicitly, resulting in promoting anti-colonial cause. As we see from the movie, the colonial soldiers who were recruited from Algeria consider themselves French citizens; almost in the very beginning of the movie the main characters sing: “We come from the colonies to save the motherland, we come from afar to die, we are the men of Africa.” However, as we watch the movie we see that the French military treats them as second-class soldiers, denying them respect, equipment, promotions and even food. As Fogarty wrote in his book about the colonial soldiers: “The Senegalese have been recruited to replace Frenchmen” (Fogarty, 7), this could be applied to all the colonial troops, and  “… the perceptions of these officers were still filtered through racial stereotypes, and no North Africans enjoyed a reputation as the equals of white French soldiers” (Fogarty, 77), which proves the fact that the indigenes had no value or respect for the French.

During another scene in the beginning of the movie, the French Sergeant Martinez (born in Africa) decides to check the new colonial soldier’s Said knowledge needed for the war, because as Fogarty also writes, the French believed that colonial soldiers had limited intelligence and therefore were unable to handle more complicated tasks that Frenchmen could: “…indigènes were incapable of performing… the specialized tasks crucial to the overall effectiveness of units larger than small squads of riflemen” (Fogarty, 61). He gives Said a grenade, which Said has never seen in his life before and was never trained to use it, and says to open it; Said does it, but keeps holding grenade in his hand. Then Sergeant Martinez quickly rips it out from the soldier’s hand and throws far away from everyone while screaming: “Hit the ground”. The grenade explodes, and the Sergeant being mad at Said hits him in his guts with a rifle butt; the other soldier is asking not to blame Said for not knowing anything about grenades, but the Sergeant answers: “I have the power of life and death over you”. This moment and phrase are emphasizing how miserable and insignificant the colonial soldiers are for him, who is in power and who is inferior. Also, it’s ridiculous to expect from a colonial soldier to be knowledgeable about grenades and perform as well as the white soldiers, when no one trained them: “…they did not receive the proper training because officers did not consider them capable of learning the requisite skills ” (Fogarty, 62).

Another example from the movie, which also demonstrates the inferiority of black colonial soldiers in comparison to the French ones, happened on board of the ship, when the troops were being transported to France to participate in Operation Dragoon to liberate the south of France. During the distribution of meals, a white cook refused to give tomatoes to a black soldier. As Fogarty says, “…French officers made their judgments within the parameters of preexisting stereotypes based upon race.” (Fogarty, 57), so the French were instructed not to give vegetables and better foods to black men, whose lives and health are not as important as of the French men. Abdelkader, one of the main characters, wanted to show those in charge that everyone was equal; he smashed all the tomatoes in the box with his feet, he also told the company Captain in front of everyone how he felt about it, and that everyone deserves tomatoes, because everyone is equal. Only after that the Captain assured them all that everyone would be treated the same and can have the same food. Watching this scene and seeing sad and at the same time angry eyes of the black man, who didn’t get one tomato because if the color of his skin, is heartbreaking and is an explicit sign of exclusion, which was constantly taking place within the French colonial rule.

There is not just war in this movie, there is also love and feelings, which are forbidden. During one of the stops in France that colonial soldiers had, Messaoud meets a French woman and spends a night with her. They fall in love, and he promises to write her and to come back. Said also gets attention from women in France, and there is a scene where he is proudly telling a Frenchwoman about the events from his battlefield:  “I free a country and it’s my country. Even if I’ve never seen it before. It’s my country.” These words are very touching, very patriotic and show Said’s hopes for being a Frenchman. Also, he thinks that the women of France he fought for should be his too.

French government didn’t approve for colonial soldiers to have anything with French women, they didn’t want this kind of “mixing” of blood, culture and as a result, children, whose fathers would be from Africa, and who would be identified as Europeans. Stoler also discusses this in her book: “…such mixing called into question the criteria by which Europeanness could be identified, citizenship accorded, and nationality assigned” (Stoler, 80). This concern for the preservation of French national identity also questioned the loyalty to French rule of those of mixed parentage, so those babies wouldn’t be welcomed: “Conceived as a source of subversion, it was seen as a threat to white prestige, an embodiment of European degeneration and moral decay” (Stoler, 80). These restrictions for citizenship were meant to separate “European” métis from “native” métis. This was important for officials to do because of “… the fear that children were being raised in cultural fashions that blurred the distinctions between ruler and ruled” (Stoler, 94). And this is why we can see in “Days of Glory” that the colonial troops discover that while they are not allowed breaks, the white Free French Forces are given leave to return home in France. This was one of the ways French government kept them from meeting with French women, and also because they’d rather for colonial men to die then the French ones.

The last scenes of the movie are even sadder, they portray the idea that: “If you die in a country, it’s your home.” The only one alive after the war is Abdelkader, who being lonely and poor visits, 60 years after the war, to a cemetery, where rounded, tapered Muslim headstones are at least as numerous as white crosses. “If I liberate a country, it’s my country,” as Saïd declared earlier, in a moment of post-battle exuberance. The movie ends with the text, explaining what happened after the war, and it “screams” about unfairness those colonial men with good hearts experienced. I couldn’t help but have my eyes full of tears when watching and reading it: “The “indigenous” soldiers saw their military pensions frozen in 1959 as their countries moved toward independence. After endless hearings a law passed in 2002 that ordered French government to pay the pensions in full.  But successive governments didn’t authorize funds until the year, when Jacques Chirac, the president of the republic, attended a screening of “Days of Glory,” a powerful exploration of injustice and resilience that arrived six decades too late, and just in time.”

Work cited

Fogarty, Richard. Race and War in France: Colonial Subjects in the French Army, 1914-1918. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins U, 2013. Print.

Stoler, Ann Laura. Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule. Berkeley: U of California, 2010. Print.

Emerson, Jim. “Days of Glory Movie Review & Film Summary (2007) | Roger Ebert.” RogerEbert.com. N.p., 22 Feb. 2007. Web. 22 May 2017.

Scott, A. O. “Yes, Soldiers of France, in All but Name.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 05 Dec. 2006. Web. 16 May 2017.