The old rifle

Movie
German title	The old gun / farewell in the night
Original title	Le Vieux Fusil
Country of production	France , Germany
original language	French
Publishing year	1975
length	103 minutes
Age rating	FSK 18, 16 (abridged version)
Rod
Director	Robert Enrico
script	Robert Enrico, ; Claude Veillot , ; Pascal Jardin
production	Pierre Caro, ; Alain Belmondo
music	François de Roubaix
camera	Etienne Becker
cut	Eva Zora
occupation
	Philippe Noiret : Julien Dandieu; Romy Schneider : Clara Dandieu; Jean Bouise : François; Joachim Hansen : SS officer; Madeleine Ozeray : Julien's mother; Catherine Delaporte : Florence Dandieu; Karl-Michael Vogler : Doctor Müller; Robert Hoffmann : Lieutenant; Jean-Paul Cisife : Chief of the Militia;
synchronization

The old rifle (in German-speaking countries also known under the alternative title Abschied im Nacht ) is a Franco-German fictional film by Robert Enrico from 1975 with Philippe Noiret and Romy Schneider based on the Oradour massacre in 1944.

action

The surgeon Julien Dandieu, pacifist and humanist and member of the Resistance , lived in Montauban in 1944 during the Second World War , in the zone libre (free zone) in southwestern France . There he leads a bourgeois and happy life with his wife Clara and his daughter Florence, whom he loves more than anything. Flashbacks tell the love story of the unequal couple - they are capricious and cheerful, he is closed and almost a little awkward, but very fond of each other.

Filming location Bruniquel Castle

In view of the imminent occupation of Montauban, he asks his friend François, his wife Clara and his daughter to drive to his family residence, a castle in the country. There, in a place called La Barberie (Barbarism), he believes his family will be safe until the end of the war. A week later, Julien wants to visit his family on the weekend. When Julien arrives, the SS Panzer Division "Das Reich" has destroyed the village in which the castle is located in the course of fighting partisans . The SS soldiers shot Florence together with the village population and raped Clara. Then they murdered Clara with a flame thrower .

Filming location La Closerie des Lilas Paris

In the face of this atrocity, the otherwise gentle and peaceful doctor decides to take bloody revenge: after returning to the castle, he armed himself with his late father's old hunting rifle in order to shoot the SS soldiers. In doing so, he uses his local knowledge in the confusing castle grounds with its numerous winding corridors, drives the Germans into traps like wild animals and kills them one by one single-handedly. In the showdown , standing behind a one-way mirror , he confronts the SS leader, who is about to shoot himself, and kills him with the flamethrower with which Clara was burned.

Julien leaves the scene and is completely deranged in the village and is picked up by his friend François in his car. He collapses while driving.

Reviews

When it was released in French cinemas, the Parisian critics unanimously praised Enrico's film. The daily newspaper L'Express described it as the director's “best film”, while the weekly magazine Journal du Dimanche said that the old rifle hit “right on target”.

At the time, Der Spiegel criticized the portrayal of the Germans in the war film. They are not "serious enemies, but [...] cartoons: drunk [...] cool, loud-mouthed, cowardly, brutal." Likewise, the contemporary criticism of the German agreed filmdienst and looked in Le Vieux Fusil no real anti-war film. It “not even reached the level of an 'interestingness' diagram on contemporary history”, the film “failed as a show piece”, in which violence and lust for murder are not subject to “analytical endeavors”, but “only an occasion for primitive tension and bloodthirsty effects " are. In the lexicon of international films , which is based on the reviews of film-dienst , the film is described today as a "story with some bloody effects", "which however makes the war generation's lack of illusion and hopeless confusion transparent".

Awards

The old rifle received the first ever French national film award in 1976 with the César in the Best Film category . Leading actor Philippe Noiret and the film music by François de Roubaix also received awards , while Enrico's film was nominated in six other categories. Romy Schneider, who at the time was preferred for her portrait of a porn actress in Andrzej Żuławski's drama Nachtblende , was not nominated and received the trophy for best leading actress at the award ceremony . Several months later, Noiret was also honored with the Italian David di Donatello as best foreign actor. In 1985 the film received an honorary award at the César Awards, the "César des Césars".

censorship

The film is an example of film censorship practiced in West Germany : especially for the West German premiere version Farewell in the Night , alternative scenes were shot and cut that softened and relativized the particularly inhuman dialogues of the Germans in the French original. Particularly brutal scenes have been removed. It is about self-censorship already carried out during production, not about the work of a state censorship agency. In the GDR , the film was released under the title Das alten Gewehr, dubbed but uncensored, in cinemas and later on television. It was not until 2007 that the German (former FRG) uncut version was released on the German market as a DVD under the title Abschied im Nacht with the German extra scenes as bonus material.

Until now one Le Vieux Fusil to the least known in Germany films with Romy Schneider. One of the few films in which Romy Schneider did not dub herself - in the GDR for financial reasons, in the West German version probably because she did not agree with the falsifications (an important reason for the re-dubbing of the GDR).

synchronization

The West German dubbing took place in 1975. The GDR version was created a year later in the DEFA Studio for Synchronization , Berlin, based on the dialogue book by Harald Thiemann and directed by Freimut Götsch .

role	actor	Voice actor BRD	Voice actor DDR
Clara Dandieu	Romy Schneider	Eva Manhardt	Annekathrin Bürger
Julien Dandieu	Philippe Noiret	Harald Leipnitz	Gerry Wolff
François	Jean Bouise	Holger Hagen	Norbert Christian
SS officer	Joachim Hansen	Joachim Hansen
Julien's mother	Madeleine Ozeray		Helga Goering
Florence Dandieu	Catherine Delaporte	Irina Wanka
Doctor Mueller	Karl-Michael Vogler	Klaus Kindler	Hasso Zorn
Chief of the Militia	Jean-Paul Cisife	Herbert Weicker	Werner Ehrlicher