A Passagem do Reno

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.

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.

As a teacher and serious student of film, I regard Passage du Rhin among the dozen best films I've ever seen. It is sad that it is no longer available to us. Fortunately in the years it was available on 16mm I was able to show it often to classes and small groups. I became so familiar with the film I could passably re-write the screen play.

Sandwiched,in Cayatte's filmography between "Le Miroir A Deux Faces" which tackled cosmetic surgery long before it was trendy and "le Glaive et La Balance" a film desperately in need of reassessment,"le Passage du Rhin" occupies a particular place .It was the first time he had broached WW2,and he did it in a very interesting way :ambitious but not always successful film.

On the plus side: Cayatte shows everyday's life in both countries (Germany and occupied France);he was one of the first to tell that French people were not all Resistance fighters (see also "Avant le Deluge" :1952).Two of his characters are collaborators (the newspaper's owner) or they sleep with a Gestapo officer (Jean's mistress).Jean himself is not a true virtuous hero:not only he dishonors and ruins the German girl's life ,but he also wants to marry his French colleague although he knows everything about her racy past in the war years.On the other hand,Aznavour's character ,who might pass for a coward cause he does not want to try to escape from Germany comes back to his new friends when the war is done.

On the minus side: the screenplay is badly written,the scenes lack focus,intensity ,and do not hang well together.Sometimes the absence of transition between the sequences is infuriating .It is sometimes as messy as Cayatte's earlier "le Dossier Noir" (1955).

"Passage du Rhin" is interesting but it lacks a firm screenplay ,like in his great works "Justice est Faite" "Nous Sommes Tous des Assassins" "Avant le Déluge" or "Les Risques du Métier"

It is difficult to enthuse unreservedly about this film but at the same time it cannot be dismissed. As one would expect from director Andre Cayatte it is a story told in a matter-of-fact manner and in common with all of his films deals with 'moral responsibility'. During the years of Occupation in France people made choices or had choices forced upon them which were not without consequences, to put it mildly! The actions of Jean, played by Georges Riviere, have a devastating impact on lovely Helga, beautifully portrayed by Cordula Trantow whilst Jean's relationship with the fascinating Florence of Nicole Courcel is damaged irreparably when he learns that she is guilty of 'horizontal collaboration'. The pace of the film is slow but it is strangely absorbing and holds ones attention. The diminutive stature and soulful gaze of Charles Aznavour would always limit the roles he could play and here he exhibits his natural sensibility as a decent chap who survives in his own way. In an ideal world his character would settle down with Helga but Fate has decreed otherwise. On the other side of the coin we have Jean, well played by Riviere. Typically of Cayatte he has cast an attractive leading man type as a character whose moral compass is decidedly defective. It is however the performances of Courcel and Trantow that leave the deepest impression. Not very well received at the time and disparaged by the New Wavelet brigade this film still managed to win the Golden Lion at Venice.