The Part Where I Don't Give Away the Endings to a Bunch of Movies

Let's talk about French movies. For the last two weeks my French film class has been mainly about perspectives on the two world wars and their impacts on France and the French. Out of the four films we've seen I can recommend them all for the French film enthusiast, but will discuss the two that most caught my attention and held in my memory.

"Joyeux Noël" ("Merry Christmas") (2005): This is the first feel-good war movie I've ever seen, and make no mistake, it is that. I felt uncomfortably optimistic at the end, since I've been conditioned throughout the viewing of every other war movie I've ever seen to expect nothing but destruction and despair. Possibly the most upbeat ending to a war movie I'd seen previously was that of "Casablanca," and it's really not that happy. Despite the intentions of all the characters to keep their own peace and lives, we have to accept that French Morrocco's police force is still corrupt and there's still a war on. I'm not the type to give away endings to things other than Shakespeare (Tragedy: They all die at the end; Comedy: They all get married; History: They probably all die at the end, but somebody might get married), so watch the movie if you haven't. Casablanca's a great movie. One of my top 100 favorites. Top 50.

But, back to "Joyeux Noël." I felt like Roger Ebert did when he saw the end of "Dead Poets Society" ("I was so moved, I wanted to throw up.") The (American) cover of the movie says it all: "Christmas Eve, 1914..." something something... "Based on a true story" and three guys walking toward the camera: French, German, and Scottish officers. The story is that of an unsanctioned truce between the three armies during Christmas and how we're not so different, all of us, and what's the point of all this fighting anyway? Why don't we sing some songs and play bagpipes and soccer (or, football) and get along? For two hours.

This same perspective of people being similar and not having much reason to fight except to quell the disputes waged between individuals hundreds of kilometers from the action is shared in the other WWI film we saw, "La Grande Illusion" (1937), directed by Jean Renoir, son of the painter. I won't discuss this one much because I felt it went on a bit, but it's worth a look. It's not as touchy-feely a film as "Joyeux Noël," but it's still a fairly sterile look at war. As one of the most famous French war movies, I had to include it in my run-down here, but I feel about as ambivalent to it as I do to "Citizen Kane" (I'll begin accepting the hate-e-mails).

The other movie which didn't bore me for a moment was "L'armée des ombres" ("Army of Shadows") (1969). This was a WWII French Resistance film. (I'd say imagine French MacGyver, except he already exists (Henri Charrière), and they already made a movie about him; it's called "Papillon" (1972) and it's got the two most un-French actors I can think of: Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman.) "L'armée des ombres" is about a web of spies moving bombs around occupied France and England, parachuting over the countryside at night, and carrying out hits on guys who blabbed. It's an intensely suspenseful and satisfying film that doesn't have a happy ending. Thank goodness; I thought I'd have to go through my whole life without finding such a picture (you know, aside from "American Beauty," "The Green Mile," "A.I.: Artificial Intelligence," and every movie about a physically deformed protaganist ("The Elephant Man," "The Phantom of the Opera," and "V for Vendetta" (which is essentially "Phantom" with political motivation).

Now here's where I will reveal the ending to a movie (sort of). If you watch the film today, it opens with a parade of German soldiers marching in front of L'arc de Triomphe for about 60 seconds. That scene was originally at the end. The director, Jean-Pierre Melville, kept switching back and forth on which end of the picture the scene should appear. It was only after the cans of film had been delivered to the six Parisian cinemas in which they began showing the film that Melville decided to take his editor and a splicer to each of the theatres and tack the film to the beginning. The first audiences apparently saw the scene at the end. As it looks now, the last scene faces toward the Arc de Triomphe and cuts to black, just where the film begins.