Rating: B
Dir: Robert Enrico
Star: Philippe Noiret, Romy Schneider, Jean Bouise, Joachim Hansen
This begins with a happy French family – father, mother and little daughter – cycling through the countryside, without a care in the world. Then a caption pops up: “Montauban 1944”. Ah. Not so care-free, for their town has been under direct occupation by the Nazis since November 1942. But with the D-Day landings having just taken place, the end is near. Julien Dandieu (Noiret) is a doctor in the local hospital, helping anyone in need without favour – an attitude not appreciated by the occupying forces. Realizing the looming dangers of a fight for liberation, he dispatches wife Clara (Schneider) and daughter Florence out of town, to a castle he has been renovating. Unfortunately, it sends them straight into the arms of an SS brigade.
When Julien discovers what happened to them – and despite the film being fifty years old, Clara’s fate still provoked an audible exclamation from me – he breaks out his old shotgun. Previously used for hunting wild boar, he turns it on a new target: the Nazis responsible. It helps that he knows all the secret passages running through the castle, and basically turns into Rambeau, the mild-mannered doctor booby-trapping and sneak attacking his way through the enemy. This is intercut with flashbacks of Julien and his family in happier times. To be honest, I found these rather superfluous. Schneider is a good enough actress, we only need a scene or two to establish how much she loves her husband. More is a bit of overkill.
But speaking of overkill… The rest is impressive, Julien ruthlessly pursuing those involved in the death of his family – in a variety of ways, not just shooting them. Of particular note, a use of flamethrowers which likely comes close to Ballerina in terms of toastiness. Indeed, this probably surpasses it in bringing home how unpleasant – and yet, effective in enclosed spaces – those weapons can be, Julien scurrying round the passageways, tongues of flame in hot pursuit (top). Pun very much intended. At some points, it feels like a Gallic predecessor to Die Hard, though the hero spurns the opportunity to upgrade from his trustworthy shotgun and leave a note telling the SS commander (Hansen), “Ho-ho-ho, maintenant j’ai une mitraillette.”
There’s particular historical resonance here. Though Montauban was spared, the same 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich who had occupied the town, wiped out the entire village of Oradour-sur-Glane while relocating to Normandy, in one of the war’s most infamous atrocities. [One wonders how Schneider felt, considering her parents were disturbingly close to the Nazi regime. Indeed, she believed her mother had an affair with Hitler] But even without knowing any of that, this is a tense, undeniably effective thriller, straightforward and uncomplicated. Bad guys do very bad things, and the good guy makes them pay. Tale as old as time, true as it can be, and probably as close to a “feel-good” movie as you are going to get, involving flamethrowers.