I really liked this movie. I saw the DVD on Friday, and watched it with director's comments the next day. The director's comments were very useful, but didn't as explicitly as I will attempt to do now give away the actual nature of the film.
It is a movie about the early years of the second world war of a sort that might have actually been made during he second world war, albeit not in France. One might see it as a case of revisionist wishful thinking. This is movie on the order--with many of the same character types, plot twists, and other conventions--of great war-time films like _Casablanca_ and _To Have and To Have Not_. Rappenneau brackets his film, in postmodern fashion, by beginning and ending it in movie theaters, and by making the Isabel Adjani character an actress who doesn't seem to be able stop acting. Who cares if she has had a face lift; she plays a woman who is tragically fake. This a movie almost as much about movies made during the war as about the war itself.
That said, I did not see this film as a spoof of mostly American war-effort movies. Rather, it is very loving tribute. Afterall, those were very good movies, some of them. If they seemed to copy each other (_To Have and to Have Not_ is a lighter, comic version of _Casablanca_)it may be because their message is timeless, and _bears_ repeating. Rappeneau's movie, like those movies, explores how basically apolitical, or opportunistically political, or even criminal individuals respond when confronted with a radical evil. Some passively acquiese, some collaborate, and some actively resist. The third option is the only ethical one, and that message certainly bears repeating. I hope this isn't too much of a spoiler.
It is wonderful how the film shows so many of its characters too caught up in their petty personal concerns to recognize, in the face of an urgent political crisis, how very petty those concerns are. This movie clearly shows why the French were so quickly defeated by the Nazi's, but also why they are our best friends. As the old joke goes, if we hadn't intervened in WWII, the French would all be speaking German; but if the French hadn't intervened in our revolution, we would all be speaking English. This movie could be a delight to francophones and francophobes alike--if the latter would bother to watch it.
I suppose it is significant that the most prominent Nazi in the film is played by an American, Peter Coyote. Perhaps there is a more, immediate, specific, more timely political message here than the above mentioned timeless one.
I had no problem with the pace of the film. It moves more quickly than most French, art-house films (in his comments, Rappeneau mentions that not just Coyote, but even the Parisian actors, complained about how quickly he demanded they speak their lines). It is also beautifully acted (by some of France's best), cinegraphed, scored, and directed. I had a little trouble believing that the characters could see as clearly as they did in the nocturnal forest scene toward the end of the film, but afterall, as good as it was, this was just a movie. But a worthy tribute.
I
It is a movie about the early years of the second world war of a sort that might have actually been made during he second world war, albeit not in France. One might see it as a case of revisionist wishful thinking. This is movie on the order--with many of the same character types, plot twists, and other conventions--of great war-time films like _Casablanca_ and _To Have and To Have Not_. Rappenneau brackets his film, in postmodern fashion, by beginning and ending it in movie theaters, and by making the Isabel Adjani character an actress who doesn't seem to be able stop acting. Who cares if she has had a face lift; she plays a woman who is tragically fake. This a movie almost as much about movies made during the war as about the war itself.
That said, I did not see this film as a spoof of mostly American war-effort movies. Rather, it is very loving tribute. Afterall, those were very good movies, some of them. If they seemed to copy each other (_To Have and to Have Not_ is a lighter, comic version of _Casablanca_)it may be because their message is timeless, and _bears_ repeating. Rappeneau's movie, like those movies, explores how basically apolitical, or opportunistically political, or even criminal individuals respond when confronted with a radical evil. Some passively acquiese, some collaborate, and some actively resist. The third option is the only ethical one, and that message certainly bears repeating. I hope this isn't too much of a spoiler.
It is wonderful how the film shows so many of its characters too caught up in their petty personal concerns to recognize, in the face of an urgent political crisis, how very petty those concerns are. This movie clearly shows why the French were so quickly defeated by the Nazi's, but also why they are our best friends. As the old joke goes, if we hadn't intervened in WWII, the French would all be speaking German; but if the French hadn't intervened in our revolution, we would all be speaking English. This movie could be a delight to francophones and francophobes alike--if the latter would bother to watch it.
I suppose it is significant that the most prominent Nazi in the film is played by an American, Peter Coyote. Perhaps there is a more, immediate, specific, more timely political message here than the above mentioned timeless one.
I had no problem with the pace of the film. It moves more quickly than most French, art-house films (in his comments, Rappeneau mentions that not just Coyote, but even the Parisian actors, complained about how quickly he demanded they speak their lines). It is also beautifully acted (by some of France's best), cinegraphed, scored, and directed. I had a little trouble believing that the characters could see as clearly as they did in the nocturnal forest scene toward the end of the film, but afterall, as good as it was, this was just a movie. But a worthy tribute.
I