Z

France/Algeria, 1969, 128 minutes, Colour.
Yves Montand, Irene Papas, Jean-Louis? Trintignant.
Directed by Costa-Gavras?.

Z is a political thriller from a novel based on incidents in Greece. In fact the film is an attack on the right-wing government and its repression in Greece, While the film takes a left-wing stand on politics and behaviour, it is presented as a reasonable left against dogmatic, self-righteous, right-wing stances. Extremists in the left are criticised as are extremists in the right. The extremists of the right appear as the worst because they base their plots and manoeuvres on their sense of God being on their side and their mission of cleansing and purifying.

A synopsis might make Z sound like a boring piece of propaganda cinema. On the contrary, Z is engrossing and exciting. The central figure of the Professor holds the film together - in the harassed preparation for his address, in his assault and death and in the investigations into his death. Yves Montand invests the character of the Professor with a fine dignity and this helps audience sympathy and concern.

The second part of the film has much of the interest of a court drama as the objective and somewhat anonymous investigator, played by Jean-Louis? Trintignant, probes the witnesses and the generals. The screenplay was written by Jorge Semprun, who also wrote Alain Resnais' Le Guerre Est Finie with Montand. Costa-Gavras?, Semprun and Montand worked after Z on The Confession, this time a critical look at the double-think of Communist countries.

Z is a very fine piece of film-making. It won the Oscar for best foreign film for 1969. It also won the Best Film Award from the National Catholic Office for Motion Pictures in the United States.

1. An engrossing film? Why?

2. Was its political bent the reason for its success or its thriller technique - or both?

3. On which side of the political spectrum did the film come down? Was it in favour of extremes or did it stay nearer the centre?

4. Why was reference to living people and situations intentional? What did the filmmakers hope to prove by this? What did they expect to achieve? (This applies also to the end of the film with the narrating of the punishments and the list of things banned from Greece.)

5. How was the Deputy presented? Was he sympathetic as a person, as a politician, what he said, as a martyr?

6. Do you agree with the C.E.O.C. lecturer's analogy of the virus of mildew with 'left-wing' civil liberties' moves? Why?

7. Do organisations, such as C.R.O.C., have the right to exist, even secretly? Do they have the right to protest against the policies of the left? Do they-have the right to use violence? In the name of God, the nation and morality?

8. What impression did the riot scenes have? Why?

9. How do you explain the logo and Vago and C.R.O.C. 's and the police's hiring of them for the assassination?

10. What examples of 'double-think' from the film, especially concerning Russia and America, Communism and Capitalism, the nature of freedom?

11. How convincing was the structure of the film as it showed bashings and the Deputy's speech? (the Deputy's question of why the moderate left's ideas always provoke violence)?

12. How did the Army and the police emerge from the film? Why?

13. What dramatic role did the Deputy's wife play in the film? Was her appearance necessary?

14. What was the significance of the sequence with the poor witness, his family's fear and the attacks on him?

15. What role did the Investigator play in the film? Why was he presented as neutral in manner and vocabulary and in dark glasses? Did he conduct the enquiry properly? when his career was placed as the alternative to his conscience? Was he right to proceed with the investigation?

16. Shock at the widespread membership of the conspiracy? At the planning and the story prepared? Are such conspiracies possible? Are they entered into in good faith?

17. What emotional impact did the investigation of the generals have on you - and the symbolism of their trying to get out the locked doors?

18. Shock at the persecution of the group after the military coup?

19. Was the film pessimistic at the end?

20. What political attitudes would the film form in audiences? C.R.O.C. was for authority, a nation where the pillars were Monarchy and Religion, national, united, clean, anti-intellectual, making war not love, on corruption and liberalism and too many liberties.

21. Must there be continual change in society? Or no change at all?

22. Why did the U.S. National Catholic Office for Motion Pictures gave it its Best Film Award in 1970 in conjunction with the National Council of Churches?