In the scene when martinez and his assistant (the guy with one arm) are sitting eating/drinking. the assistant says something about going back home and his mother is wearing a veil too like the assistants mother, does it hint that martinez might be of arab or moor descent? Also why would a guy named martinez who sounds like he is spanish be on the side of the french?
shareSpain has been under Moor domination during all the early medieval period. As a portuguese descent's frenchman myself, i know the major cultural influence of the muslim civilisation in all latin europe.
When you study the history of the Iberic peninsula, you realise that it was the medieval far-west of Islam.
The fact that Martinez tells that his mother is wearing a veil is not surprising, my own grand-grandmother wore a black veil since the day she lost her husband. That is a tradition inherited from the muslim era.
Martinez must say that because the assistant mother's garment reminds him his own mother and country. In a more subtle way, that might be a way to induce that he is not rascist.
It is also not surprising that Martinez is on the french side, a lot of spaniards emmigrated in France during the industrial revolution. They were glad to leave a monarchy, with her land possessed by nobles, to join a republic with better living conditions. In the south of France, where i live, a majority of people have hispanic names.
Martinez statut of second-generation immigrant can also be a clue to explain why he finally get closer of his indigenous soldiers.
So maybe thoses lines are there for justifying the message of the movie : All mens are equals, and should be treated the same.
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thanks so much for the info guys
shareMartinez's christian name being Roger, he is not Spanish.
Martinez is a "Pied noir". It is used for french persons born and living in french colonies. 2nd (or more) generation settlers. Litterally, Pied Noir means "black foot": someone who first set foot on black land.
This is why Martinez is closer to Arabs than other French. He knows their culture while French dont.
So, French receive more rewards than "Pieds Noirs" who receive more rewards than Arabs.
In the end, Martinez gets angry that the one handed guy discovers the arabic status of his mother: he would loose his status of Pied Noir.
QED
"Martinez's christian name being Roger, he is not Spanish."
He is not Spanish, but he may well be of Spanish descent, as his surname suggests. There's absolutely no reason why a Frenchman of Spanish extraction shouldn't have a French Christian name.
Plenty of Spaniards went to Algerie. He is a descendant of them certanly. Also, the movie implied that his mother was a native. That veil had nothing to do with traditions from Moors in Iberia or whatever.
shareI was under the impression that he may actually have hidden his origins in order to advance further in the French Army.
If he was indeed Arabic or of arabian descent then he would have been treated no better that the others. By changing his name to Martinez he can hide his origins and still progress through the french army as would a normal frenchman.
I think the part where Said speaks to him about his mothers photo shows that he is indeed hiding what he is thus the threat to kill Said if he ever spoke of it again.
The fact that culturally Martinez was rather French, and the fact that he was half French, would have meant he would probably have been treated as though he were any other Pied-Noir in the army. French "official" racism was founded less on actual race and more on actual culture, and people of mixed origin who associated with the French tended to be considered French rather than their other half.
This largely depends on the general level of racism in an individual colony though; in Indochina, where the French population was significantly more racist than elsewhere, there was a bit of an uproar when Eurasians were given the right to join normal French units rather than Indochinese units. The situation in North Africa, which was much closer aligned to metropolitan France (whereas Indochina was the farthest off colony both culturally and in terms of distance), wasn't as bad at the time period.
I think it's safer to assume that Martinez is thus in denial about his own origin simply for personal reasons; he doesn't WANT to be Arab is more the case than simply being an opportunist and trying to exploit his French half for the sake of progression through the ranks.
Also, "Martinez" is also used to a lesser extent in Italy; it is possible Martinez's father was from Tunisia, where a significant proportion of the Pied-Noir European population was actually Italian.
To Johannesdr2:
You gave quite a nuanced response. I don't know if it was stated on this board yet, but I have heard that many Maltese, Neapolitans, Piedmontese, people from the Balearics/Iberia, Corsicans, etc ended up in North Africa by the end of the 19th cent. Lots of Italians ended up in Tunisia: one case in point, the actress Claudia Cardinale was voted "Best Italian Girl in Tunis" before her career took off, which seems to indicate a sizable presence of Italian immigrants in at least one part of French North Africa. Many different Mediterranean groups colonised Algiers, not only in the time of the French domination, but well before that, even back to the 15th century & the age of the Barbary corsairs. I have read about Jacques Berque and others who were strong proponents of a Mediterranean cultural synthesis in North Africa at the time of the French colonization. More than this, anyone who was a Christian or Jew (after 1870?) in 20th cent. French North Africa could be much more easily assimilated with the colonisers than the Berbers or the Arabs of the cities, so naturally it could be guessed that maybe the French sought to build a friendly population by any means, grafting virtually every kind of European into their fold: not only Mediterranean peoples, but I have read of instances of Germans being included as well. And it appears that the French, on occasion, were given to favour the Berbers more than the Arabs on North African soil; Berbers were seen officially as simply poor, fierce, and in need of civilization, comparable in some way to American Indians. But the Arab population of North Africa under French rule was virtually always an enemy, at least from a colon's standpoint: hard-to-impossible to assimilate, much more Islamically-oriented than some groups of Berbers, and perhaps less aesthetically pleasing? I added that last part thinking of Edith Piaf's Berber grandmother.
If he had changed his name to conceal his origins, he would have chosen a French last name, not a Spanish one (Martinez). Immigrants from Spain, Italy and elsewhere faced some hostility in France back then. "Africa begins at the Pyrenees" (a line originally from Alexandre Dumas) was a common refrain at the time.
shareI'm guessing he was Arab, Spanish , and French. That is sad he had to hide part of his identity, but that's the way it was back then.
shareThanks for explaining that Brooz, I was wondering about that particular plotpoint.
Cheers,
Tom516
"It is not enough to like a film. You must like it for the right reasons."
- Pierre Rissient
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