Itto

80

ltto

Synopsis

ltto, the daughter of a Chleuh tribal leader, finds herself torn between her lover's allegiance to the colonial forces and her father's struggle against them. A parallel story shows a French military doctor and his wife adjusting to the demands of life in a remote corner of Morocco.

Critique

film-Jean Benoit-Levy Georges Duvernoy Etienne Rey Georges Asselin Paul Parguel Albert Wolff Jean Benoit-Levy Marie Epstein 97 minutes Drama Simone Berriau Moulay Ibrahim Ali Ben Brick Hubert Prelier Simone Bourday 1934

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makers Jean Benoit-Levy and Marie Epstein, like the social melo­ drama La Maternelle/Children of Montmartre (1933), ltto (1934) addresses motherhood, parent-child relationships, and personal sacrifice for the greater social good, but ltto takes these themes and applies them to an unlikely sub-genre: the cinema colonial.

Based on a story gleaned from colonial soldier M:iurice·Le Glay's accounts of the Chleuh, ltto takes an atypical approach to a familiar formula. Like most colonial films, ltto features French soldiers yet does not focus on them; the film also figures indigenous charac­ ters as enemies, yet it does not insist on their anonymity, as seen in Legion films like La Bandera/Escape from yesterday (1935) and

Le Grand jeu/The Full deck (1934). Nor do the native

Moroc-cans remain sworn enemies of colonial forces; by the end of ltto, most of the Chleuh fight alongside the French rather than against them. Shot on location in North Africa, the story unfolds from the Chleuhs' point of view, with a cast comprised mostly of Chleuh extras except the role of ltto, played by French actress Simone Berriau. Yet Berriau was no ordinary starlet - she was a colonial officer's widow who was fluent in Berber. Her command of the language was instrumental to the directors' vision, since dialogue among Chleuh characters was (only partially) translated into French via subtitles.

These efforts to foster aesthetic and narrative authenticity already make ltto a standout among interwar colonial films, but what makes ltto truly unique is Epstein and Benoit-Levy's unwaver­ ing focus on women. Three female characters, including the film's eponymous protagonist, highlight women's involvement on both sides of the conflict. For the French, a military doctor's wife repre­ sents the capacity to endure hardship and sacrifice in the service of a higher mission. A secondary character is a vivacious waitress whose demonstrates her affection for the soldiers by visiting them in the field, a gesture that rattles the gender barriers normally con­ sidered inherent to the cinema colonial.

With ltto at the centre of the story, the film begins with her plans to marry Miloud, a neighbouring clan leader's son.

Primar-ily a love match, their union also symbolizes their fathers' pact to resist together the French colonial forces encroaching on their territory. But after a military veterinarian saves his clan's flock of sheep from an epidemic, Miloud's father declares allegiance to the French; enraged at the betrayal, ltto's father forbids her marriage to Miloud. With ltto's support, Miloud rallies warriors from his clan to rejoin the fight against the French, but ltto's clan sets up an ambush en route to the outpost, and Miloud takes a shot to the head. After waking up in the infirmary, the French doctor by his side, a grateful Miloud also joins forces with the colonizers.

Despite opposing loyalties, Miloud and ltto continue their clandestine meetings, and soon ltto reveals that she is pregnant. Miloud tries to convince her to leave her clan for good, but ltto refuses, retreating into the mountains to give birth in secret. Pass­ ing Miloud's son off as a foundling, she rejoins her clan, but when the baby falls ill, ltto's allegiances become entangled even further. Skeptical of tribal remedies and fearing for her child's life, ltto

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sneaks him away to the village, where the same military doctor who saved Mi loud also cures his son. As a personification of Western medicine as a conduit to colonial power, this Fr;,nch doctor (the toubib) plays a major ideological function. His family life also runs parallel to ltto's when his wife delivers a child; during one key sequence, ltto and the doctor's wife bond over their shared experi­ ence of maternity.

Medicine and maternity thus form the narrative linchpins of ltto, and both of these themes mark a striking departure from the exclusively male, military-oriented framework that defines most of the cinema colonial. Still, this altered focus does not detract from the film's colonialist agenda; instead of relying on (or simply imply­ ing) brute force as a way to wrest control from indigenous peoples, medicine emerges as a means of obtaining and maintaining a kind of power that offers benefits to both sides. Instead of legionnaires ordered to build roads for some indiscernible purpose, as in La Bandera, Benoit-Levy and Epstein portray medical profession-als whose inner calling motivates their work and whose presence helps save both livelihoods (i.e. the flock of sheep) and human lives on both sides of the colonial divide. Yet, despite their evident ideological function, French characters remain overshadowed by the Chleuh, whose collective conversion from colonial adversaries to colonial advocates shapes the plot trajectory and delivers ltto's final tragedy.

In political terms, ltto makes a fairly conventional case for French imperialism, but in narrative terms it crafts this message using decidedly unconventional material. With a story that hinges on overlooked colonial populations - colonized peoples and French women -ltto relies on the seminal contribution of Marie Epstein, herself an often overlooked film-maker. By revising and rearranging the components of the cinema colonial to reflect a more inclusive spirit, Epstein's feminist and humanist vision helped create a colo­ nial (and colonialist} film like no other.