The Undeclared War

To give voice to the repressed past, Tavernier made The Undeclared War as seen through the eyes of Frenchmen drafted in Grenoble, the site of one of the largest anti-war riots in the 1950s. This four-hour documentary, drawn from fifty hours of original interviews with Frenchmen, all conscripts, is poignant—many veterans sharing their wartime experiences for the first time. The film is punctuated by striking images of the Algerian landscape and footage of the riots, but shows no footage from the war itself. The powerful testimonials are the core of an important work of oral history, providing an account of a destructive conflict that was still taboo within French culture at the time this film was made.