An upper-class corporal from Paris is captured by the Germans when they invade France in 1940. Assisted and accompanied by characters as diverse as a morose dairy farmer, a waiter, a myopic intellectual, sometimes reaching the French border.
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The closest Renoir ever came to a direct remake. Though to write it off so is to not only misunderstand the film, but his development between '37 and '62. Where the former encapsulates a bittersweet hope for fraternite among all men on the verge of a catastrophe, the latter swings wildly from burlesque humor to tragic resignation in a struggle for personal freedom in it's aftermath.
This is a decent piece late in Renoir's career in the same vein as prior works such as Grand Illusion and This Land is Mine, and he gives it sort of a neorealist feel like that of Rossellini without losing his own touch of course.