Marie-Octobre
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Marie-Octobre |
| Original title | Marie-Octobre |
| Country of production | France |
| original language | French |
| Publishing year | 1959 |
| length | 96 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Julien Duvivier |
| script | Julien Duvivier Jacques Robert based on his novel of the same name (1948) |
| production | Lucien Viard |
| music | Jean Yatove |
| camera | Robert Lefebvre |
| cut | Marthe Poncin |
| occupation | |
| |
Marie-Octobre is a French chamber play film directed in 1958 by Julien Duvivier, starring Danielle Darrieux in the title role as a former resistance fighter.
action
Apart from the arrival of one of the participants in front of the building in the evening, there is only one place of action: a spacious hall with splendid beamed ceilings, a large fireplace, a dining room behind a curtain and cozy, cozy interiors in a former mansion. Old Victorine is still the housekeeper who accompanies everything in the background.
Here after 15 years there is a first meeting of former resistance fighters and a situation prepared by Marie-Hélène and her business partner. This house, the property of the former Resistance commandant Castille, was the center of a regional resistance group against the German occupiers between 1940 and 1944. First of all, you have dinner together, introduce yourself to the audience with your job and current life situation, and talk about the "old days". Castille was arrested and shot by the Gestapo in this room shortly before the liberation 14 years ago . The others escaped and went into hiding. After that, the Resistance network collapsed. Marie-Hélène Dumoulin, who was once the driving force behind the resistance under the alias Marie-Octobre and who had loved Castille, and the current owner of the property, François Renaud-Picart, pushed for this re-encounter because it was explosive information for the meeting of a German former secret service agent that the meeting at that time was betrayed. But this German could no longer remember the name of the traitor.
Now that evening the person who once betrayed the chief of the resistance to the Germans is to be exposed.
An old friends' game of cat and mouse begins, which gets to the core of those involved. Almost everyone begins to brick the wall, some of those present seem to have greater secrets, while others are curling up their truths. Some of the ex-resisters are likely to be betrayed for a variety of reasons: one was jealous, the other was greedy for money, the other was accused of cowardice or a previous relationship with fascism . The disdainful collaboration with the former enemy also turns out to be a motive. After all, there is only one person left who could have committed the betrayal. The conspiratorial community of yore had already considered executing the traitor in their circle after the first opening of the treason, only the priest present votes against it. The culprit tries to flee by force of arms before a final exposure, but can be caught again. Ironically, the only woman in the group carries out the “death sentence”. Then she tears up the man's forced confession and calls the police with her own confession.
background
This drama about resistance and betrayal in their ranks takes place in prosperous France at the end of the 1950s. For the history of the Resistance then almost all the familiar French the subject is with the unenlightened in the real story of Jean Moulin and Rene Hardy , pseudonym Didot, and the two years before the liberation 1943/1944 under German occupation and French regimes of collaboration with closely linked to the German authorities. The real name of the role Marie-Octobre (Dumoulin) also clearly indicates this to the French. The accusations against Hardy that were repeatedly made up until those years about how treason could have been concealed by him all reappear in the film's dialogues. Persons accused / suspected in this way who were active in the resistance then hardly had a chance to free themselves from false suspicions. Possible witnesses were dead or written documents were destroyed because of the necessary conspiracy at the time. The suicide / murder of a real or falsely accused traitor , which is the subject of the film , ultimately resulted in the same thing. Its existence in post-war France was ruined. Regardless of the evidence of actual treason, Hardy went to trial in 1947 and 1950 with no results. To this day, the lawless puration - literally cleaning, meaning lynching or vigilante justice against collaborators - in the immediate post-war period is an issue that was bypassed in the French public.
Production notes
Marie-Octobre was filmed from November 17 to December 10, 1958 and premiered on April 24, 1959. In Germany, the 29-minute longer synchronized film version started on July 9, 1959 and was shown for the first time on television ( ARD ) on July 29, 1967 .
The film structures were designed by Georges Wakhévitch , the dialogues by Henri Jeanson .
In 2016, a version of the film restored by the Pathé Foundation that year will be shown at arte .
Reviews
“This story is awesome, and you should be amazed if you are not gripped, enthusiastic and captivated by Julien Duvivier's film. It certainly works, and you voluntarily fall into the little traps the director lays out for us. For sporting reasons, one looks for solutions to the problem and one works out arguments. But our attention remains superficial. We only take part from a distance, as bystanders in a drama that unfolds before our eyes. We're not as involved in this case as we were with The Twelve Jurors . (...) The fact remains that ' Marie-Octobre ' is sure to be a great success with the public. The tension built up by Jacques Robert and the liveliness of Henri Jeanson's dialogues make viewers forget the flaws of the story. As for the actors, they are all excellent. "
“Julien Duvivier (' Under the Sky of Paris ') used a rare technique for his new film: shortly after the start, the camera moves into the hall of a villa and does not leave this room for the duration of the film. There, a woman and nine men try to convict the person who betrayed them to the Gestapo 15 years earlier, when they were all members of a resistance group. Problems of guilt and atonement arise, which are incompatible with the cunning Schwarzer-Peter game that the director instigates. In the lurid, but soon also monotonous dance, Duvivier casts suspicion on each of the characters. He intensifies the change of constellation with a virtuoso image guidance, which his actors (among them Danielle Darrieux and Bernard Blier) have grown in the cleverly scattered close-ups. "
“A masterfully staged drama based primarily on dialogues based on the model of Sidney Lumet's ' The Twelve Jurors '. Effective, exciting thriller with brilliant actors. "
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jean-Claude Sabria: Cinéma français. Les années 50. Paris 1987, no.567
- ↑ Information from arte on the film , October 2016
- ↑ Marie-Octobre in Der Spiegel 33/1959, p. 54
- ^ Marie-Octobre in the Lexicon of International Films
Web links
- Marie-Octobre in the Internet Movie Database (English)