In Montauban in 1944, Julien Dandieu is a surgeon in the local hospital. Frightened by the German army entering Montauban, he asks his friend Francois to drive his wife and his daughter in the back country village where Julien has an old castle. One week later, Julien decides to meet them for the week end, but the Germans are already occupying the village.
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The Allies are closing in on their small town, but not quite quickly enough for the liking of local surgeon “Dandieu” (Philippe Noiret) so he relocates his wife and daughter to their remote castle, well off the beaten track, in the hope that they can sit out the rest of the war safely. When he takes a drive out to see them some time after, he arrives at it’s small chapel to be met by a vision of carnage. Racing to the castle, he gets there just in time to see the brutality of the Nazis at their worst and immediately vows revenge. Just how, though, can this civilised old gent possibly inflict any sort of vengeance on this well armed troop? Well, for a start he has an old shotgun that had been carefully hidden amidst the tunnels beneath the building. Then there are these particularly useful tunnels themselves; there’s a secret passageway up into the salon and finally, he’s an ingenious chap who considers that he now has very little left to lose. Fuelled by some intermittent reminiscences of life with his wife (Romy Schneider) and nimble on his feet, Noiret now proceeds to present us with an almost entertaining rabbit-shoot of a scenario before a denouement that is entirely fitting and yet touching, too. There’s not a great deal of dialogue: the imagery does enough of the speaking, and the whole scenario paints quite a potent picture of the dangers faced by many decent people whose lives were terrorised by these brutes during WWII. It also touches, slightly, on the psychological effects of what he witnessed and their aftermath: his sense of purpose serving to divert his realisation of just what had happened long enough to get the job done. Schneider doesn’t feature so often, but when she does she not only lights up the production but her character’s brief appearances emphasise just how ghastly and inhumane their occupiers really were, and that presence is also well epitomised by Joachim Hansen’s SS officer. Some attention has gone into the look of the film and with a Noiret very much on-form, it’s well worth a watch.
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