A Matter of Resistance

Marie lives unhappily in a château near the Normandy coast. It is 1944; her husband Jérôme is fussy, timid, uninterested in the war going on around him and unwilling to take her to Paris. A German unit is billeted at the château because its commanding officer is pursuing Marie. At the same time a French agent working for the Allies is courting her too; he passes himself off to the Germans as her brother and, caught up in it, forgets what he came to do. Jean-Paul Rappeneau's first feature, with Catherine Deneuve as Marie, Philippe Noiret as Jérôme and Pierre Brasseur also in the cast. It won the Louis Delluc prize in France. Telling the occupation and the run-up to the landings in a comic register was unusual for its moment.