L'opération cinématographique. Équivoques idéologiques et ambivalences narratives dans La Bataille du Rail

The Making of a Film: Political and Narrative Ambivalence in La Bataille du Rail. S. Lindeperg. Since the release of René Clement's La Bataille du Rail in January 1946, attempts have been made to appropriate it by many apparently irreconciliable groups, all of whom acclaimed the film as authentic narrative and first hand history. A double paradox stems firstly from the use of heroic idealism in fiction as a proof of reality and secondly from the appropriation of this film by opposing political positions, all of which found justification in the ambivalences of the narrative. This article seeks to clarify these paradoxes by reconstructing the complex process of the making of the film, using the archives of the Cinémathèque Française (a study of the financial budgets and contracts, successive versions of the script and so on). The heroic construction of history is thus seen to have been justified by the need to reconcile the widely divergent strategies of the interested parties (the management of the French railways, the communist resistance, etc.). Beyond the specific study of René Clement's film, the article suggests a new historical approach to cinema, in which the latter is regarded as an elaboration, the product of the relationship between the film-maker's place in the professional field, cinematic pratice and procedures, and narrative construction.