Marie-Octobre

Resistance fighter Marie-Octobre (it's her former code name) gathers her mates after the war.There's a traitor among them and they've got to discover him and do away with him.The audience is induced to suspect one by one all the "guests",à la Agatha Christie.The film forgets the historical background very quick to focus on an efficient but rather artificial suspense.

The good cast (Danielle Darrieux,Serge reggiani,Bernard Blier,Paul Meurisse) makes up for the conventional side of this story.It' s a watchable work,but it's not representative of Julien Duvivier's greatness:he was in the last part of his brilliant career and time had begun to take its toll.But his touch is still here though.

This movie is casted with the best french actors of the time ; everyone of them made a sparkling career : Danièle Darrieux, Paul Meurisse, Lino Ventura, Bernard Blier, Paul Le Guers, Sege Reggiani, both in movies and theater. Many are second roles performers who illustrated themselves in mystery movies. The dialogues are witty; may be you have to know french to appreciate it to the most. The violence is in the heavy atmosphere unlike actual movies,although some scenes are physical.The plot is intelligent like an Agatha Christie and well organized by the Director. Jean Duvivier is one of the best of his generation. I would recommend it to any movie lovers.

Undoubtedly another great Duvivier's picture, this time touching in a neuralgic matter, due on occupied France many cooperating with the Germans invaders, this is the main point, after a fifteen years a hearsay came to Marie-Octobre's ears and his slavish admirer Léon Blanchet (Robert Dalban), thus they decided gathered all member of the French resistance at those time to find out the real traitor and thief, the meeting shall be in the same place where everything happened, that ends up with the Gestapo breaking out the meeting, also killing his leader, further the traitor also stolen three millions francs, they are eleven, a pressman, a priest, a tax collector, industrialist, a butcher, an attorney, a locksmith, a doctor, among others and the still young Lino Ventura as Carlo Bernardi as night club's owner, they faces each other, many things come up, suspicions on the air, in searching for the truth they reconstituting the final scene when his leader was killed, robust and valuable effort, displaying the human nature even on the worst wartime backdrop, Duvivier walks in a stony ground!!!

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First watch: 2020 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 8.5

At first sight, a policier. Or adaptation of Agatha Christie novel. Or only a war story. Or a story of revenge.

But each of this definitions works in some measure. It is a film admirable crafted and this represents one of its basic virtues. The second good point, obvious , the cast. Not the last, the atmosphere, constructed crumb by crumb.

After fifteen years , a sort of trial . The members of resistance group looking for the author of murder of one of them. Danielle Darrieux is just superb, proposing a great character in wich past love remains part of desire, cold one, of justice.

A film captivating the viewer as testimony of this special hunt of truth, in which the accusations, doubts, excuses are mixed in a large effort to cure a stain of past.

The plot of Jacques Robert's novel 'Marie-Octobre' of 1948 and Michael McCarthy's film 'The Traitor' from 1957 are too alike to be coincidental but there the similarity ends for when Robert adapted his work for the screen he had the services of one of the greatest directors Julien Duvivier, the superlative dialogue writer Henri Jeanson and a cast comprising some of France's finest.

The subject matter could not fail to strike a chord with Gallic audiences, dealing as it does with treachery and collaborationism during the German occupation. It also works as mystery thriller as suspicion falls upon each of the protagonists in turn until the traitor is finally unmasked. The question then arises as to the method of punishment......

Filmed in three weeks on a single set designed by Georges Wakhévitch and observing the Aristotelian unities of time, place and action, this could easily be filmed theatre but becomes much more thanks to the masterly manner in which the director moves and groups his players and the clever camerawork of Robert Lefebvre. Apparently it was shot in sequence so that none of the actors knew the identity of the culprit and what actors they are! Each possessing an unique persona but delivering ensemble playing of the highest order.

The only negatives are the sudden bursts of music at certain dramatic moments and the truly laughable sub-titling.

The post-war films of Monsieur Duvivier are variable but he remains one of the Big Five of France's Golden Age. He departed this life in 1967 and this finely executed, technically polished piece is arguably his dernier hourra.