Les Carabiniers (1963) (the Riflemen) tells the story of two poor men called to serve in battle, lured by promises of the world’s riches. With grandiose names beyond the realm of identification, Ulysses (Marino Mase) and Michelangelo (Albert Juross), pasteboard buffoons devoid of psychological density, receive letters from the king of their fictional country that allow them to have complete freedom from consequence while fighting in the war, in return for anything they desire—swimming pools, Maseratis, women—at the enemy’s expense. Viewer cannot identify opposing sides in battle.
Their wives, Venus and Cleopatra (Catherine Ribeiro and Genevieve Galea) encourage them to fight when they hear about the riches. They leave and cross the battlefields and villages, destroying and pillaging as they wish. The pair’s exploits are recounted through postcards sent to their wives, telling tales of the horrors of battle. The previously idealistic idea that the men have of war disintegrates, as they are still poor and now wounded. They return home with a suitcase full of postcards of the splendors of the world that they have fought for, and are told by army officials that they must wait until the war ends to receive their pay. One day, the sky explodes with sparks, and the couples race into town, believing that the war has ended. Ulysses and Michelangelo are informed by their superiors that their king has lost the war, and that all of the war criminals must be punished. The two men are then shot for their crimes.
The renowned author and critic Susan Sontag referenced the film in her 1977 collection of essays On Photography. With respect to the "two sluggish lumpen-peasants" returning home bearing postcards of the treasures of the world instead of tangible treasure, Sontag noted that "Godard's gag vividly parodies the equivocal magic of the photographic image."
Godard's goal was to make a film that a child could understand, thus observations by Matthew Blevins (TIFF Review):
The longer I live, the more I tend towards simplicity. I use the most hackneyed metaphors. Basically, that is what is eternal, the stars are like eyes, for instance, or death like the sun.”
– Jorge Luis Borges
By opening his 5th film with a quote by Jorge Luis Borges, Jean Luc Godard establishes that Les carabiniers lives in a fabled reality and will use the warm metaphors built by the shared human experience as a universal shorthand, suggesting that the characters and events in the film are merely farcical archetypes that divulge universal truths about the absurdities of war. These are not the beguiled soldiers from any specific war from any specific nation, they are representative of the misguided and exploited peoples that have carried out actions for reasons they don’t quite fully understand in every conflict throughout history. They have been duped into action by the lies of recruiters that have promised them the riches of the world and volunteer to go to war to satisfy their bored opportunistic girlfriends and to mold themselves into men of action and heroism, something rare in a backwater land of outdoor bathtubs and wandering ducks.
See Robert Stam in Reflexivity in Film & Literature.
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