State of Siege

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  • State of Siege
  • État de siège
Directed byCosta-Gavras
Written by
Produced byJacques Perrin
Starring
CinematographyPierre-William Glenn
Edited byFrançoise Bonnot
Music byMikis Theodorakis
Distributed by
Release dates
  • 30 December 1972 (1972-12-30) (Germany)[1]
  • 8 February 1973 (1973-02-08) (France)[2]
  • April 1973 (1973-04) (US)[2]
Running time
121 minutes
Countries
  • France
  • Italy
  • West Germany
Languages
  • French
  • English

State of Siege (French: État de siège) is a 1972 French–Italian–West German political thriller film directed by Costa-Gavras starring Yves Montand and Renato Salvatori. The story is based on an actual incident in 1970, when U.S. official Dan Mitrione was kidnapped and later killed by an urban guerrilla group in Uruguay.[3][4]

Plot

After an extensive military and police operation, a body is found shot in a car. The deceased is Philip Michael Santore, an employee of the United States Agency for International Development. Santore, killed by the Tupamaros, is eulogized as an advocate for the poor at his state funeral. A tenacious leftist journalist, Carlos Ducas, wonders why the "communications consultant" Santore was targeted alongside higher-value victims.

In an extended flashback, Tupamaro guerrillas hijack several cars in order to kidnap the second secretary of the American Embassy (who is released), the Consul of Brazil, and Santore. Santore is treated well by his masked captors, who reveal through a calm interrogation that Santore actually worked as a sophisticated instructor of state terrorism and torture to officers of the Uruguayan, Brazilian, and Dominican dictatorships and acted as a liason with anti-leftist death squads. Despite a massive operation, the Uruguayan military and police are unable to find the captives, and the government refuses a proposed prisoner exchange which would free the Consul and Santore in return for the release of political prisoners.

After a large number of Tupamaros are captured by the police and their ultimatum goes unanswered, Santore's captors decide to kill him. Santore agrees, saying he is worth more to the US dead than alive. In the final scene, porters at the airport wryly watch the arrival of a new American official, Santore's replacement.[5]

Cast

Production

Though the setting of State of Siege is never explicitly named, signages throughout the film refer to Montevideo, and the Tupamaros are mentioned by name. Costa-Gavras, living in Paris at the time and preparing his film The Confession, had learned of Mitrione's case in French newspaper Le Monde and decided to make further investigations in Uruguay himself, accompanied by screenwriter Franco Solinas (The Battle of Algiers).[3][4][6] The film was shot in Chile during the brief democratic socialist rule of Salvador Allende, just before the 1973 Chilean coup d'état, which Costa-Gavras would dramatise in his later film Missing.[4] Although Allende supported Costa-Gavras' project, the director faced opposition both from Chilean Communist Party members and the conservative mayor of Santiago Province commune Las Condes during filming.[7]

The role of the government's president is played by Chilean painter Nemesio Antúnez.[8]

Release and reception in the US

State of Siege became the subject of controversial discussions upon its US release.[7] Smith Hempstone claimed the film falsely indicted the US and Ernest W. Lefever wrote that it presented a "profoundly fraudulent" portrait of Mitrione.[7][9] A planned screening during a festival organised by the American Film Institute in the John F. Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C., in April 1973, was cancelled by the AFI's director George Stevens, who argued that the film "rationalizes an act of political assassination".[10][11] Protesting Stevens' decision, twelve filmmakers, including François Truffaut, withdrew their films from the festival.[10] Writing in the New York Times, John F. Kennedy's former staff member Theodore Sorensen described State of Siege as a simplistic but "important film", which he hoped would awaken viewers from their "slumbering indifference" to Latin America.[7] Mark Danner notes the contradiction between Montand's depiction of Santore as a "highly polished cold war dialectician", which he views as crucial to the film, and Mitrione's rustic character; Danner also states that the film's revolutionary ethics have gone unfulfilled in South America.[4]

For The New Yorker, Pauline Kael wrote that the film was a "political argument on a conscious level" where "the youthful, idealistic Tupamaros and the old fat-cat government men and businessmen are almost cartoons of good and evil."[12] On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 78% of 9 critics' reviews are positive.[13]

Awards

References

  1. "Der unsichtbare Aufstand". Lexikon des Internationalen Films (in German). Retrieved 5 March 2023.
  2. "State of Siege". American Film Institute. Retrieved 6 March 2023.
  3. Ebert, Roger (14 April 1973). "State of Siege". Rogerebert.com. Retrieved 5 March 2023.
  4. Danner, Mark (27 May 2015). "State of Siege: Their Torture, and Ours". Criterion Collection. Retrieved 5 March 2023.
  5. "State of Siege: Their Torture, and Ours". The Criterion Collection. Retrieved 2026-06-25.
  6. Baumberger, Jeanne (2006). "Z | Un film de Costa-Gavras" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 27 April 2015.
  7. Shaw, Tony (2015). Cinematic Terror: A Global History of Terrorism on Film. Bloomsbury. ISBN 9781441107084.
  8. Storr, Robert (2017). Interviews on Art. Heni Publishing. ISBN 9780993010354.
  9. Lefever, Ernest W. (1974). ""State of Siege": How Marxists used the Big Lie against the United States in documentary". Hearings before the Committee on Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives, Ninety-third Congress. US Government Pronting Office. p. 169.
  10. Michalczyk, John J.; Michalczyk, Susan A. (2022). Costa-Gavras: Encounters with History. Bloomsbury. ISBN 9781501390951.
  11. Miller, Michael R. (18 April 1973). "State of Siege: Undesirable". The Cornell Daily Sun. Vol. 89, no. 129. Cornell University Library. Retrieved 16 April 2014.
  12. Kael, Pauline (2011-10-27). The Age of Movies: Selected Writings of Pauline Kael: A Library of America Special Publication. Library of America. pp. 400–408. ISBN 978-1-59853-171-8.
  13. "State of Siege". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 2026-03-26.
  14. "Trauer in Montevideo". Der Spiegel (in German). No. 8. 18 February 1973. Retrieved 6 March 2023.

Further reading

  • Costa-Gavras; Solinas, Franco (1973). State of Siege. London: Plexus Publishing. ISBN 9780859650038.