Michel Mardore directed two movies : the second "le mariage à la mode" was a shameless exploitation of the "freedom " in the wake of the events of May 68 and sank without a trace ; this one,much more interesting ,and which promised good things is almost unknown in its native France ;when it was released , more than the horrors it depicted , it's the swim in the nude which relegated the film to NC-18 ,hence its commercial failure .
Horst Buchholz was ,along with Hardy Krüger , the most gifted German actor of his generation ; he worked with Julien Duvivier (Marianne mein Jugendliebe) , Billy Wilder ("one two three") John Sturges ("the magnificent seven" ) ; almost forgotten in the nineties ,his reappearance in Benigni 's "la vita e bella" (1997) as a nazi doctor was stupefying .
Muriel Catala ,who portrays the fourteen-year-old girlie (in real life she was 18),specialized in undressed parts (André Cayatte's "verdict" )and her career suffered accordingly .
Buchholz had already played opposite a teenager ( in the moving "tiger bay" starring Hayley Mills) ,but this is completely different ; a multilingual actor, he spoke fluent French and English -he was married to a French actress,Myriam Bru -,which explains he's got no accent (which may puzzle some viewers)
An UFO in the early seventies French cinema, it depicts the rural occupied France circa 1943; brainwashing is rampant at school where the girl is about to take her certificat d'études (certificate formerly obtained by pupils at the end of primary school;it does not exist anymore): the Marechal (Pétain)is the savior of our homeland, it protects us from attacks of the terrorists ( the resistant fighters) ,from our enemy's bombing ( the English) who in days of old burned patriot Joan of Arc on the stake ,and from Bolshevism (the peasants were afraid of communism and in the occupation days sufffered less from the dearth
of food)
The coming of a handsome young man ,who tries to show her that what she learns is false , that the hymn ("Maréchal ,nous voilà") is a masquerade (it 's one of the rare movies in which it's sung), that he was sent by the English to save the country ,to help the resistant fighters who often die to free their homeland, means the end of childhood and innocence and sexual awakening : the girl thinks she met the hero (her prince charming) every girls long for ; and in a threatening world ,it's thrilling to be in love with a man she feeds ,she hides, it's par excellence the romantic adventure .
The low angle shot , which starts from the boots ,reveals the horrible truth ; perhaps both parts do not hang well, but it inspires the disturbing immorality of the movie ; the horrors of the barbaric nazis were obviously inspired by the Oradour sur Glane historic massacre (which took place on the 10th of June , a year after the events depicted in the film ); the awful fire of the church is only suggested.
The epilogue is a little far-fetched (Danielle Ajoret ,essentially a stage actress, plays the grown -up girl ) but it does not spoil this offbeat work , extremely different from what the French cinema had to offer at the time.
