★ 8 / 10
The crossing of the ruin...
GianfrancoSpada
The film emerges from that postwar French cinema moment in which the trauma of the Occupation had not yet ossified into myth but still lingered as a contested…
The film emerges from that postwar French cinema moment in which the trauma of the Occupation had not yet ossified into myth but still lingered as a contested memory. Unlike the stark propagandistic productions of the immediate post-liberation years, this work reflects a France already engaged in debates over complicity, collaboration, and survival, and one can sense the tension between remembrance and reinvention in every frame. The camera itself becomes a vehicle of this ambivalence: it oscillates between a quasi-documentary rawness in the exteriors and a more theatrical, carefully composed stillness indoors, as though the director were caught between wanting to capture the dirt of lived history and the elegance of staged moral allegory.Visually, the film strikes a precarious balance. The cinematography often privileges wide, static takes, which lend gravity and weight to the representation of daily life under wartime strain. Yet this choice sometimes risks draining urgency from the narrative momentum; moments that beg for tighter cutting and handheld immediacy instead unfold with painterly patience. That restraint is not necessarily a flaw-it heightens the sense of inevitability and slow suffocation-but it occasionally undercuts the visceral tension expected from a wartime setting.Where the film excels is in the use of mise-en-scène to convey the fragility of normality amid collapse. Small details in set dressing-a forgotten newspaper, a crooked family photograph, a meal interrupted-are invested with symbolic weight. This technique recalls, in a different register, the subtle realism of Rome, Open City (Roma città aperta, 1945), though the Italian film pushed its neorealist ethos toward raw immediacy, whereas here there is a distinctly French inclination toward symbolic construction and moral tableau. Costumes, too, serve as more than markers of period authenticity: they emphasize the social stratifications of occupied society, particularly the contrasts between prisoners, civilians, and occupying forces.Performance style reflects a transitional moment in French acting traditions. One notices a blend of classical theatrical delivery, where dialogue is enunciated with a deliberate clarity, and a more modern, psychologically inflected approach in the younger cast members, who embody hesitation, awkward silence, and vulnerability with greater naturalism. This dissonance can be jarring: certain confrontations feel almost stage-bound, while other moments-particularly those that hinge on understatement and restraint-achieve a piercing authenticity. The film never quite resolves this stylistic duality, but the friction itself mirrors the cultural moment of 1960, when French cinema was caught between traditional studio-bound drama and the insurgent aesthetics of the Nouvelle Vague (New Wave).One aspect worth noting is the way the score operates not simply as accompaniment but as commentary. It avoids martial clichés and instead leans toward subdued, almost melancholic motifs. At its best, the music underscores the banality of endurance and the suspended temporality of imprisonment; at its weakest, it becomes overly insistent in guiding the spectator's emotions, particularly in scenes that might have benefited from silence. In this sense, the film departs from the leaner sound design of something like The Colditz Story (1955), which deliberately restrained its use of music to heighten tension and emphasize realism. Here, the score feels like a vestige of an earlier, more melodramatic cinematic tradition.The historical context of 1960 cannot be ignored. France was in the midst of reckoning with its colonial wars, particularly in Algeria, and the film's attention to themes of captivity, identity, and moral ambiguity resonates with those anxieties. Its narrative does not shout propaganda but rather interrogates the fine line between necessity and betrayal, survival and dignity. The fact that such a story could be told with relative frankness at this moment signals a shifting cultural willingness to revisit World War II not as a black-and-white saga of resistance and heroism, but as a gray zone where personal and collective compromises were inevitable. The technical polish of the production-its controlled cinematography, careful pacing, and star-driven performances-suggests a desire to reach a wide audience, but beneath that polish runs a current of unease that aligns more closely with the Europe of 1960 than with the Europe of 1940-45.If one criticism lingers, it is that the film occasionally strains under the weight of its own ambition. Its desire to fuse intimate micro-history with broader symbolic resonance sometimes results in tonal unevenness. Scenes of delicate human vulnerability give way too quickly to declamatory passages, as though the film cannot decide whether it wants to be a chamber piece or a national allegory. Yet it is precisely in this unresolved tension that the film finds its enduring interest: it is both artifact and meditation, a cinematic object situated halfway between wartime memory and the ideological battles of its own decade.
★ 10 / 10
60s French film set in WW2, sympathetic to the ordinary Germans.
gavinalananderson
This title is now available on DVD in France (StudioCanal). The only problem is that there are no subtitles. I generally try to get French DVDs with subtitles…
This title is now available on DVD in France (StudioCanal). The only problem is that there are no subtitles. I generally try to get French DVDs with subtitles in French (for the hard of hearing) as that helps if they speak too fast for me or have difficult accents. Nonetheless I enjoyed this very much and although I missed some of the dialogue it was always clear what was happening. I saw this when it came out in the 60s and it has stayed with me ever since. I have been looking for it on DVD for a long time and bought it as soon as I saw it on a French website. I now find it a very thoughtful anti-war film, which acknowledges the widespread collaboration with the Nazis, which, together with the ending, must have been shocking to French opinion at the time. Charles Aznavour is excellent as the believable everyman, and the rest of the cast are fine. Georges Riviere plays a character that I remembered as quite unsympathetic, but interestingly I now see as much more complex and in his own way, principled. Recommended.
80%
AUDIENCE
6.7/10
357
•••
A very good movie, very powerful.