Star Faces and Star Bodies in an Age of Atrocity: Alain Cavalier’s L’Insoumis and Mark Robson’s Les Centurions

Often physically flawless to the point of perfection, cinematic stars are frequently metaphorized as gods, or mirrors, of our own collective desires. But why would the iconography of stardom be mobilized to narrate a socio-political phenomenon defined by absolute violence — for example, the war that raged between the French army and Algerian nationalists from 1954 to 1962? Through detailed analysis of Alain Cavalier’s 1964 polar, L’Insoumis, and Mark Robson’s combat film, Les Centurions (1966), this article will trace connections between the history of decolonization and political engagement, and theories of identification, gender, stardom, and spectacle, before examining how the contradictory values embodied by stars in these films mirrored the ideology of a society in a state of contradiction: split between a desire to know the truth about the war and a desire for ignorance.