Parky at the Pictures (DVD 8/11/2018)

Produced in 1916, The Battle of the Somme is regarded as one of the most important British films ever released, as it alerted audiences back home to the extent of the carnage occurring on the Western Front. Recorded by official British cinematographers Geoffrey Malins and John McDowell, this is one of the first instances of moving images being used for propaganda purposes. Some of the footage was filmed before hostilities commenced on 1 July 1916 - when 19,000 British personnel lost their lives - but there was nothing fake about the images of a mine exploding beneath the Hawthorn Ridge Redoubt or the heroism shown while advancing by members of the 1st Battalion, Lancashire Fusiliers of the British 29th Division. As the Cinema News Journal reported: `There is no make-believe. This is the real thing. This is war, rich with death.'

Initially, the footage was destined for newsreel release, but the British Topical Committee for War Films suggested it would make more impact as a feature and Malins and screen pioneer Charles Urban were entrusted with editing it down to five reels by producer William F. Jury. However, it is widely believed that the War Office intervened to have some of the more graphic episodes removed, in case they had a deleterious effect on the morale of both the public and potential conscripts. Running just over an hour, the film premiered at the Scala Theatre in London on 10 August 1916 and was later shown privately to the Royal Family before being exported to 18 countries. 

Although lacking the terrifying sounds of combat, The Battle of the Somme not only provided audiences with an authentic impression of trench warfare, but also inspired considerable pride in the Tommies doing their bit for their country. Despite protests by the likes of the Bishop of Durham, who considered it immoral to make entertainment from the suffering of soldiers and the bereavement of their families, over 20 million tickets were bought by patriotic Britons in the two months after its release. However, the coming of sound led to this landmark picture being forgotten and it was only after it had been added to UNESCO's Memory of the World Register that the Imperial War Museum backed an extensive restoration that was premiered to coincide with the 90th anniversary of the 1918 Armistice. 

Just about every image leaves an indelible impression - whether it's the overloaded troops jauntily heading for their battle stations, the sight of corpses piled on the trench floors, a German POW being shoulder-barged out of the way by an angry Tommy or the blank expressions of those who had just witnessed hell on earth. This should be compulsory viewing, if only to fulfil UNESCO's remit of guarding against `collective amnesia'.

It's impossible to watch Ypres (1923), Walter Summers's reconstruction of events on the Ypres Salient between October 1914 and October 1917, without acknowledging the sincerity of the film-makers and without experiencing a numbing sense of regret that so many had to die so horrifically and so needlessly over a small strip of Belgian territory that became something of a bellwether as to the progress of the Great War. 

Heavily reliant on intertitles, this is a fascinating mix of historical overview and celebration of individual acts of courage. The initial action centres on the advance of the Kaiser's army and the march of the British Expeditionary Force to counter it. Intriguing footage shows cavalry units preparing for one of their last frontline encounters and troops marching past the Cloth Hall that would soon be reduced to a shell by mortar fire. 

The First Battle of Ypres commenced on 19 October and Summers stages scenes of the night fighting that caused Gheluvelt to be lost. He also refers to the senseless slaughter of the Royal Scots Fusiliers (who were mown down after refusing to leave their trench without orders) and the heroism of Brigadier General Charles FitzClarence - a Victoria Cross holder who perished leading a counter-attack by the 2nd Worcestershires - and Padre EJ Kennedy, who went unrewarded for galloping across the infamous Hill 60 to deliver a crucial message to prevent a convoy of ambulances from driving into danger. 

The rearguard mounted by a Queen's College theology student, Second Lieutenant Geoffrey Woolley, is also cited, as he became the first Territorial officer to earn the Victoria Cross in holding Hill 60 against repeated attacks in April 1915. Woolley went on to become the chaplain at Harrow School. But fellow VC, Lance Corporal Fred Fisher, lost his life defending a Canadian weapons cache shortly afterwards. 

This roll of honour approach continues with mentions to Captain Francis Scrimger of the Canadian Medical Service (who carried a wounded man on his back across No Man's Land), Private John Lynn (who was gassed at his machine-gun post) and Flight Sub-Lieutenant RA Warneford (who destroyed a Zeppelin). But Summers also stages combat sequences to emphasise the dangers posed by snipers and grenades, the exposure of going over the top and the relentlessness of the artillery peppering men staggering valiantly across terrain pocked with craters and awash with mud. 

However, he also digresses to show the lighter side of life on the Western Front as soldiers relax at Poperinghe, the so-called `Hostess of the Salient'. In addition to offering such amenities as shops, a barber and a cinema, the town was also the site of Toc H, a saloon bar-cum-gentleman's club, where chaps could let off steam over a pint, a piano and a pillow fight. They could also read mail from Blighty and Summers shows how much a letter from home could mean to men desperate to escape the grim reality of their surroundings for just a few hand-scribbled lines. 

This coda is merely the prelude, however, to a concluding segment on the pitiless Battle of Passchendaele, which erupted at 3am on 7 June 1917 and continued in torrential rain that turned already risky sorties into suicide missions. Summers pays tribute to Lance Sergeant John Moyney and Private Thomas Woodcock of the Irish Guards, who each received the Cross of Valour for holding the line for 96 hours at Broenbeek. He also commemorates the resilience of three VC winners: South African-born, Ireland-raised Captain Clement Robertson, Australian Lance Corporal Walter Peeler and Canadian Lieutenant Robert Shankland, who respectively led a tank assault on foot, single-handedly took a German pill-box and left Passchendaele Ridge to fetch reinforcements and then held Bellevue Spur with his platoon. 

Yet Summers never glorifies warfare or diminishes its horrors. Admittedly, some of the re-enactments lack the pyrotechnic heft to do more than hint at the ferocity of the conflict. But contemporary audiences were suitably impressed, albeit never in the same numbers that had greeted producer Walter F. Jury's The Battle of the Somme and The Battle of the Ancre and the Advance of the Tanks (1917), which combined mock and actual footage filmed by Geoffrey Malins and John McDowell. Seen today, Ypres is short on cinematic sophistication. But, sometimes, compelling content simply has to take precedence.

In the immediate period after the Great War, a number of British films about the conflict continued to fight the propaganda battles against the Kaiser and the Beastly Hun that had started somewhat belatedly when the government realised the role that cinema could play in conveying information, espousing patriotism and raising morale. However, from the mid-1920s onwards, Western Front pictures across Europe began to reflect upon the carnage of the campaigns and the casualties suffered by both sides. Among the most notable offerings was German Louis Ralph's Unsere Emden (1926), an equitable record of the 1914 naval battle of Cocos that prompted British Instructional Films to respond in kind with The Battles of Coronel and Falkland Islands (1927), which is available from the BFI in a striking new transfer. 

Director Walter Summers had served with distinction as a sergeant in the trenches. Indeed, the second of his three decorations for bravery inspired the epochal play, Journey's End, which was written by his brother-in-arms in the 9th East Surreys, RC Sheriff. But Summers was keen for those back home to experience what their loved ones had endured between 1914-18 and he had been widely acclaimed for his British Instructional reconstructions, Ypres (1925) and Mons (1926). However, recreating sea battles posed an much greater challenge and Summers sought the co-operation of the Admiralty to ensure the action had a scope and scale that models and archive footage could not create. His tenacity was rewarded with permission to stage the major maritime manoeuvres with Royal Navy ships off the coast of Malta, while he pressed the Isles of Scilly into doing duty as the Falklands. The result was a record of such authenticity and spectacle that it was proclaimed one of the finest pictures produced by a British film industry that was rarely commanded accolades from continental critics. 

Numbering John Buchan (of 39 Steps fame) among its quartet of writers, the action sticks to the historical facts as closely as possible. In 1914, the 5th Light Cruiser Squadron comprising HMS Good Hope, Monmouth and Glasgow is detailed to patrol the South Pacific in order to protect British imperial interests. However, in late October, Rear Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock encounters the German fleet under Vice-Admiral Graf Maximilian von Spee at Coronel and, following standing orders (and evidently inspired by the portrait of Horatio Nelson on the wall of his cabin), he elects to attack a force that includes SMS Leipzig, Nurnberg, Dresden, Gneisnau and the flagship Scharnhorst. In the ensuing struggle, Monmouth is destroyed and her helpless crew are fired upon in the water, while the flagship Good Hope eventually sinks after a valiant rearguard. 

Back in London, Admiral Jackie Fisher is appointed First Sea Lord to address the problems that had resulted in Britain's first naval defeat in a century. In addition to ordering the refitting of cruisers HMS Inflexible and Invincible, Fisher also appoints Admiral Sir Doveton Sturdee to command the retaliatory force, which is able to set sail sooner than expected after the yards in Devonport complete their work in record time. Yet, while the Admiralty plots its revenge, Von Spee urges his admirers in the German colony at Valparaiso in Chile to be wary of the wounded foe. Indeed, while attending a celebratory dinner party, he refuses to drink to the crushing of the enemy and, instead, toasts the bravery and dignity of his adversaries. Moreover, when he is presented with a bouquet of flowers, he wonders how long it might be before a wreath might be more appropriate.

Anticipating a response, Von Spee sets his course for the Falkland Islands in order to seize coal supplies and neutralise the wireless station at Port Stanley. Spotting enemy ships on the horizon, a volunteer force assembles to protect the harbour. However, Sturdee steams into view in the nick of time in early December and makes fake smoke in one of his ships to give Von Spee the impression that the fleet is fully fuelled and ready to counter any landing party dispatched from Gneisnau and Leipzig. Certain that he will be defeated once HMS Kent, Cornwall, Glasgow and Carnarvon are joined by Invincible and Inflexible, Von Spee orders  Nurnberg and Leipzig to retire and decides to cut and run for a neutral port. But Sturdee gives chase and Leipzig and Nurnberg are quickly sunk. The crew of the Scharnhorst bail out after it catches fire. But Von Spee goes down with his ship, while the survivors of the Gneisnau are picked up by Sturdee's flagship after they scuttle their vessel. 

Fisher receives news of the victory with grim satisfaction rather than triumph and this tone of respect for worthy opponents characterises this meticulous account. Even when shooting in the studio, Summers is careful to have the reflection of rippling water playing on cabin walls to ensure that the human aspects of the story are as authentic as the naval set-pieces. Somewhat disappointingly, he reduces the Falkland reservists to a willing, but inept Dad's Army. But, otherwise, Summers is always mindful of the sensibility of audience members who would still be grieving for fallen heroes. Consequently, there is quiet pride in exploits of the British crews rather than jingoistic triumphalism. 

The dramatic interludes (played by an uncredited cast) are serviceable, although they were unusual for the time in focusing on commanders rather than the common man. The close-up of Von Spee realising he has been outflanked and must pay the ultimate price is deeply moving. But the picture's power comes primarily from the footage filmed in the Mediterranean, which benefited greatly from the advice contributed by one Captain Hankow (one of several Germans involved in the project behind and before the camera) and assistant director of Graham Hewett, who had been an officer aboard HMS Vindictive. However, the cinematic highlight is the remarkable shipyard montage, which demonstrates a technical ingenuity and mastery on behalf of Summers and editor Merritt Crawford that reveals the influence fo the depiction of machinery in Abel Gance's La Roue (1922) and the Constructivist potency that Sergei Eisenstein achieved in showing the operation of the engine room in Battleship Potemkin (1925).

Reckless romance in a time of conflict is the theme of Frank Borzage's 1932 adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms.. Loosely inspired by the same events that informed Richard Attenborough's In Love and War (1996), the story centres on an American ambulance driver and a volunteer nurse on the Italian front in the months leading up to the Battle of the Piave River in June 1918. Little combat is depicted, as the emphasis rests firmly on the morality of stolen passion in the midst of a crisis. Yet, the overriding emotion in Benjamin Glazer and Oliver H.P. Garrett's screenplay is the fear that those caught up in the Great War will die before they have had a chance to live. 

Italian surgeon Adolphe Menjou rhapsodises to American pal Gary Cooper about the pretty English nurse he has just met. An architect who volunteered to drive ambulances at the front, Cooper is happy to drink and patronise prostitutes, but has no truck with love. However, when he mistakes Helen Hayes for his escort during an air raid, Cooper is instantly smitten and fobs Menjou off with Hayes's friend, Mary Philips when they double date at a soirée supervised by head nurse Blanche Friderici. As they walk in the moonlit garden, Hayes reveals that she entered nursing because her fiancé of eight years had joined up. But she has been alone since his death and, despite having seen colleague Peggy Cunningham being sent home for getting pregnant by a soldier, Hayes allows Cooper to take her virginity as they canoodle beneath a statue. 

Eager for Hayes to know that he genuinely loves her, Cooper turns back from an expedition to the front to confess his feelings and Menjou decides to transfer Hayes to Milan to prevent his pal doing anything foolish. Yet, when Cooper is wounded by a stray shell while off duty, Menjou sends him to Hayes's hospital to recuperate and they are married by sympathetic priest Jack La Rue. Superintendent Mary Forbes takes a very dim view of Cooper, however, and arranges for him to be sent back to the line when she finds bottles hidden around his room. Hayes bids him a tearful farewell in the bedsit they had been sharing before taking a train to Brissago in Switzerland to have his child. She writes to him daily, but Menjou intercepts their messages and Cooper becomes so distraught that he deserts in order to find her. 

Philips curses him for compromising Hayes when he confronts her in Milan and refuses to reveal her whereabouts. So, he places an advertisement in the newspaper for Hayes to meet him at his hotel, only for Menjou to keep the rendezvous. Feeling remorse for keeping the lovers apart, he tells Cooper where Hayes is staying and he risks being captured by the military police as he makes his way to the Swiss border. He arrives as Hayes comes out of surgery, having lost her baby during an emergency caesarian. She insists on prettifying herself before Cooper is allowed into her room and she allows him to make plans for their future, even though she knows she is going to die. As the locals take to the streets outside to celebrate the signing of the Armistice, Hayes passes away and Cooper picks her up to stand in the sunlight streaming through the windows proclaiming a new dawn. 

Stripping away so much of the muscularity that makes Hemingway's prose so distinctive, this is a shamelessly sentimental melodrama that would certainly have struck a chord with audiences who would have lived through the conflict and endured their own share of love and loss. The author supposedly detested it for playing down the battlefield horrors he had witnessed. But, while acknowledging that this merely pays lip service to the source novel and rather lurches between incidents to stress the whirlwind nature of the love affair, there is no denying the brilliance of Borzage's technique, which owes much more to the visual fluidity of the silent era than the staticity of the first five years of the talkies. 

The standout sequences involve a point-of-view shot showing the ceilings of the Milanese hospital as Cooper is wheeled through the corridors on a gurney and the floating boom shot that picks out the pertinent details in Hayes's shabby room as she fibs in a letter to her beloved about residing in the lap of luxury. But, exceptional though Charles Lang's photography might be (his soft-focus close-ups of Hayes are ravishing), Hans Dreier and Roland Anderson's production design is also exemplary and reinforces Paramount's reputation for being the most European of the Hollywood studios. 

All of the performances are admirable, although Cooper (who would only come into his own under Frank Capra in the middle of the decade) delivers his dialogue with a stiffness that is only partially explained by his character's diffidence. The underrated Menjou (who was recently seen excelling in Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory, 1957) particularly excels as the medic who allows jealousy and camaraderie to cloud his judgement, while Hayes is touchingly human as the well-bred lady paying the cruellest price for succumbing to animal passions. The frank discussion of her deflowering and pregnancy is typical of American cinema in the so-called pre-Code period, although Borzage makes much of the bedside wedding to legitimise the stillborn child and make Hayes's demise all the more tragic. It is noticeable how differently Charles Vidor played this aspect of the story in the 1957 colour remake with Jennifer Jones and Rock Hudson.

French director Jean Renoir saw action during the Great War and his hatred of slaughter is evident in his pacifist masterpiece, La Grande Illusion (1937). Fearing that another conflict was looming, as the Rhine was re-militarised and German armaments output began to escalate, Renoir was keen to alert audiences to the folly of warfare and the artificiality of the national, class and religious barriers that prevent people from enjoying the benefits of their common humanity. Having himself been wounded in the leg while serving with the cavalry and having later flown as a reconnaissance pilot, Renoir was in an ideal position to assess the notion of duty and its consequences for officers, conscripts and civilians alike. So, together with screenwriter Charles Spaak, he produced what many consider to be cinema's most trenchant and compassionate pacifist tract.

At the height of the Great War, Captain Pierre Fresnay and Lieutenant Jean Gabin are on an aerial recce when they are shot down by German ace Erich von Stroheim. Being a junker, he invites the aristocratic Fresnay to lunch and they discover several mutual acquaintances, including a woman of whom they are both inordinately fond. It's all very civilised. Yet, while the pair have more in common through their social circle than they have with the majority of their comrades in arms, they each realise they must play the game and Fresnay is dispatched with the working-class Gabin to a prisoner of war camp.

Keen to return to active service, the new inmates join the team digging an escape tunnel. They also befriend Marcel Dalio, a Jew who shares the food parcels sent by his nouveau riche family with his fellow POWs. But the distinctions that divide everyday French society remain intact and it's only during the camp show - when news comes that Fort Douaumont has been recaptured at Verdun - that they unite for a rousing rendition of `La Marseillaise' that results in Gabin being punished with a stint in solitary confinement. 

Just as the tunnel is nearing completion, the entire French contingent is transferred and a language problem prevents them from tipping off the incoming British about the potential escape route. Fresnay, Dalio and Gabin go their separate ways. But, having tried to break out of various camps, they are reunited at Wintersborn, a mountain citadel whose new commandant is none other than Von Stroheim, who has been so badly injured that he needs to wear a back brace.

Despite being frustrated at being unable to fight, Von Stroheim again reveals his genteel side by tending to a flowering plant in his quarters and lamenting to Fresnay that the conflagration seems set to destroy the established order that has afforded them so many comforts and privileges. But Fresnay is more attuned to the changing atmosphere and plays a tin whistle on the ramparts during an appel call to create the distraction that allows Gabin and Dalio to escape by lowering themselves by rope from a window. Reluctant to harm a fellow patrician, Von Stroheim orders the guards to stop shooting at Fresnay. However, he fatally wounds him with a careless shot of his own and remorsefully nurses him as the Frenchman dies warning that there will be no place for their kind in the new world.

If Gabin and Dalio are anything to go by, however, the transition is going to be anything but smooth. Despite needing to co-operate as they traverse the German countryside heading for Switzerland, they argue and decide to strike out alone after Gabin resorts to anti-Semitic insults. However, they are soon reunited and take refuge from the inclement weather in a shed, where they are discovered by farm wife Dita Parlo. Having lost her husband at Verdun and her three brothers in battles that were supposed to be landmark imperial victories, she has lost faith in the cause and not only shelters them, but also protects them from the patrols out searching for them. Gabin falls in love with her and promises to come back to her once peace is declared. But, as he and Dalio have vowed to return to the line on reaching France, their future is uncertain after the cross the frontier in the closing frames.

Such is the political significance of La Grande Illusion that it's easy to overlook its cinematic qualities. Although much of the action was filmed on location - with the Château du Haut-Kœnigsbourg in Alsace being used for Wintersborn - Eugène Lourié's production design soberingly conveys the sense of confinement that emphasises the differences and similarities between the nationalities, classes and creeds. Moreover, the precise combination of Christian Matras and Claude Renoir's fluent camerawork and Marguerite Marthe-Huguet's editing laid the foundation for the shooting style that André Bazin would later call mise-en-scène. Even Decrais's costumes are key, as while the majority of the cast are in military attire (Gabin wore Renoir's old aviator's uniform), the dress that Julien Carette wears during the variety show has as much impact on the morale of the prisoners as the news from the Western Front.

Yet, this was a film that was almost never made. While working on the screenplay, Renoir became intrigued by Spaak's outline for the Popular Front drama La Belle Équipe and tried to sell La Grande Illusion to fellow director Julien Duvivier. However, he was more interested in making La Belle Équipe and Renoir was left with the problem of raising funds for a film that was almost certain to cause controversy across the continent. But producer Raymond Blondy was able to find backers after he signed up Jean Gabin, who was then France's biggest star. 

The picture soon ran into difficulties, however. Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels was so disgusted by a story that besmirched German honour and had the temerity to contain a sympathetic Jewish character that he branded it `Cinematographic Enemy Number One'. He put pressure on Mussolini to ensure it failed to win a prize at the Venice Film Festival, but the jury defied the authorities and bestowed a special award for `Best Artistic Ensemble'. Goebbels had more luck in Belgium, however, as Prime Minister Paul-Henri Spaak (who was the co-scenarist's brother) banned it outright. Yet, ironically, Hermann Goering admired the film and allowed it to be screened within the Reich, albeit without the scenes lionising Dalio. Moreover, it became the first foreign-language title to be nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. 

On the outbreak of war, however, the French government outlawed the film because it supposedly encouraged fraternisation with the enemy. When Paris fell, Goebbels ordered all prints to be destroyed. However, the negative was smuggled to Berlin (probably under the auspices of Frank Hensel) and hidden by the Reichsfilmarchiv until 1945 when it was sent to Moscow by the conquering Red Army to form part of the Gosfilmofond collection. Meanwhile, as all copies were presumed lost, the picture's reputation took a considerable battering after the Liberation, with critics denouncing it for anti-Semitism and fostering the mindset that led to collaboration under Vichy. Even though he refuted such claims while writing for Cahiers du Cinéma in the mid-1950s, François Truffaut deemed it one of Renoir's lesser works as it lacked the personal touch of true auteurist cinema.

Two decades later, the negative found its way back to France as part of a consignment from Moscow. Yet it still lay undiscovered in the Toulouse Film Institute vaults until the 1990s when the body teamed with Studio Canal to produced a restoration that almost immediately led to La Grande Illusion being reclaimed as a masterpiece. The recent digital overhaul was supervised by the Italian laboratory Immagine Ritrovata and it's to be hoped that a new generation will not only recognise its artistry, but also the sense and sincerity of its message. 

Around the 50th anniversary of the outbreak of the Great War, a number of film-makers began using events on the Western Front to comment on the conflicts of their own times. Taking their cues from Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory (1957) and Mario Monicelli's La Grande guerra (1959), the likes of Joseph Losey's King & Country (1964), Philippe De Broca's King of Hearts (1966) and Richard Attenborough's Oh! What a Lovely War (1969) highlighted the folly of warfare at a time when thousands were perishing in the senseless slaughter of Vietnam. Yet, it took a while for De Broca's allegorical satire to find its audience, after some largely lukewarm reviews had put paid to its box-office prospects. But the ongoing mayhem in South-East Asia, coupled with the renewed popularity of novels like Joseph Heller's Catch-22 (1961) and Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962) gave this pacifist provocation a cult cachet. 

As the Kaiser's army retreats across France, Colonel Helmut von Krac (Daniel Boulanger) orders Lieutenant Hamburger (Marc Dudicourt to destroy the quaint town of Marville. Von Krac's barber (Paul Faivre) overhears him arrange for a hidden stash of bombs to be detonated at midnight by the bell-striking knight in the church clock tower and he just manages to send a Morse message to some advancing Scottish forces before being gunned down. Anxious to avoid the destruction of a crucial bridge, Colonel Alexander MacBibenbrook (Adolfo Celi) volunteers Charles Plumpick (Alan Bates) to conduct a recce and defuse the ordnance. However, his speciality is tending messenger pigeons and he soon finds himself hiding in the local lunatic asylum to avoid the last German patrol. 

Welcomed by the Duke of Clubs (Jean-Claude Brialy) and General Geranium (Pierre Brasseur), Plumpick calls himself the King of Hearts to avoid capture and the inmates follow him into the town when he forgets to lock the main gate. Monseigneur Marguerite (Julien Guiomar) heads straight for the church, where he decks himself out as a bishop, while Madame Eva (Micheline Presle) finds some make-up and lingerie and sets herself up as the new owner of the bordello. Monsieur Marcel (Michel Serrault) dons a wig and a cravatte in settling into the barber's shop, while Geranium takes over the visiting circus and releases a bear from its cage before challenging a chimpanzee to a game of chess. 

Coming round after being knocked out by a falling telegraph pole, Plumpick changes out of his kilt and is astonished to see the inmates cavorting around the town in fin-de-siècle garb. When Marcel and Geranium prove to have no idea about blockhouses, knights or bombs, Plumpick sends messages to MacBibenbrook. But one of the pigeons is shot down and Von Krac sends Hamburger to investigate, just as MacBibenbrook sends Mac Fish (Jacques Balutin) and two equally gormless Tommies (Georges Guéret and Eric Vasberg) to do the same thing. 

Seeking sanctuary in the brothel, Plumpick hopes to find someone with the sense to realise they are all in danger. But Madame Eva advises him to live in the moment and introduces him to Poppy (Geneviève Bujold), who admits to not knowing how to make love. Before Plumpick can learn more, he is swept away on a fire engine by the Duke and Geranium, who prepare him for his coronation under the gaze of the Duchess (Françoise Christophe), and her three children, Brunehaut (Madeleine Clervanne), Alberic (Palau) and Gontrand (Louis Joyot), who are all senior citizens in baby clothes and sailor suits. 

As Plumpick processes around the square in a carriage being pulled by a white camel, Hamburger's unit arrives in a couple of armoured cars, only to be decked with streamers and party hats. They are bemused by the scene unfolding before them, as Madame Eva and her girls sing hymns in the church, while Marcel conducts the organist and Monseigneur Marguerite searches for a crown. The Duke asks Plumpick why he is nervous and reminds him that state ceremonial and religious ritual are mere theatre to be enjoyed, but not taken too seriously. 

Overhearing Hamburger mention the blockhouse, Plumpick leaves his coronation to see where they are going. With Mac Fish looking on from a gateway, Plumpick sees the concrete structure in front of the church, which had been garlanded by the revellers. He charges back to his throne in time to be acclaimed `the King of Hearts'. However, Hamburger suspicious and he is prying close to Plumpick when he is called away because Geranium and Marcel have stolen the armoured cars and are running amuck. Unable to stop them, the Germans beat a hasty retreat and the baffled British follow soon afterwards, as the chimp passes on a bicycle and an elephant strides past with a white handkerchief in its trunk.

Finding the unconscious Plumpick in the square, the inmates carry him to the town hall on the frame of a grand piano. The Duchess and Madame Eva try to revive him with kisses, with the Duke agreeing to be cuckolded if it will bring the king to his senses. Eva remembers Poppy and hastens to the brothel to see if she will marry the monarch. She readily agrees and tightrope walks to her fiancé on a telegraph wire. On waking to the church bell chiming six, Plumpick charges to the blockhouse and tries to shatter the concrete with a pickaxe. Despairing of being able to carry out his orders, he is so touched by the trust of his subjects that he decides to devote himself to their safety rather than completing his mission. 

Yet, when he attempts to lead them out of Marville aboard a white horse, the inmates refuse to follow, as they have heard there are rabid beasts beyond the town walls. Seeing them standing on the ramparts, Plumpick takes pity on them and returns to their midst to much rejoicing. As he and Poppy retire to the town hall, the Duke and Duchess stroll in the park and Geranium joins Madame Eva in a big brass bed to plan the creation of an army of generals and whores. 

Plumpick dozes off in front of the fire and wakes at three minutes to midnight. He frets about being unable to defuse the bombs, but Poppy urges him to enjoy the time that's left to him and to watch the knight strike the hour. Remembering the barber's message, Plumpick races across the square and climbs the clock tower in time for the knight's mace to strike his own head rather than the bell. The town is saved and, as Von Klack puts Hamburger before a firing squad for bungling, MacBibenbrook orders the advance. 

He marches through the gate to see the townsfolk dancing and is persuaded to bivouac for the night by the Duchess, who fancies kissing a different moustache. The regimental band plays for the kilted troops to dance a Highland jig and MacBibenbrook orders Mac Fish to use some gunpowder to create a fireworks display to please the ladies. However, Von Krac sees the sparks and concludes that the bombs must have gone off after all and he commands his soldiers to return to the town. 

They arrives just as MacBibenbrook is treating the inmates to a farewell parade and they manage to march right past the Germans without Von Krac noticing. But, when Poppy tosses a bouquet between the two armies, they turn and face each other. Ordered to line up, they proceed to gun each other down until the only soldier left alive is Plumpick. Geranium is unimpressed by the ham actors overdoing their death scene and, with more troops being spotted on the horizon, they decide it's time to return to the sanity of the asylum and Plumpick watches them pick their way through the corpses littering the square. 

As the French army occupies the town, Plumpick and his pigeon are awarded medals for their gallantry. But the prospect of returning to the frontline doesn't appeal and he jumps off an army lorry and presents himself to the nuns at the gates of the asylum in the nude. He is greeted with glee by Geranium, who promises to teach him a card game with no rules, while the Duke reassures him that he is safe indoors and reminds him that the best adventures are those that take place while looking out of a window. 

Having witnessed the ugly reality of war while serving as an army newsreel cameraman in Algeria, De Broca was keen to make a pacifist statement on the screen. Reuniting with Daniel Boulanger (with whom he had shared an Oscar nomination - with Jean-Paul Rappeneau and Ariane Mnouchkine - for the screenplay of That Man From Rio, 1964), De Broca based his picture on the story of a group of inmates who had escaped from their bombed-out asylum during the Great War and been gunned down by the Germans while dressed in the uniforms borrowed from some dead Doughboys). In hindsight, the decision to tack on a happier ending seems like something of a misjudgement, as the idea that war is an act of madness would have been more potently couched if Plumpick and his new friends had perished in a hail of bullets.   

Many contemporary critics objected to the heavy-handed nature of De Broca and Boulanger's satire, while several subsequent commentators have lamented the whimsical depiction of mental illness. There's no denying that the humour is a little broad in places, while the inmates conform to popular stereotype rather than psychiatric reality. Yet it's interesting to note the roles they assume and it would be instructive to learn something about their lives before they were committed. Moreover, the 32 year-old De Broca (who also cameos as a young Adolf Hitler) never sets out to patronise or trivialise. Consequently, it's easy to see why this would have become a countercultural favourite in the United States, with the Central Square Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts holding it over for five years. 

Fifty-two years on, it looks a bit dated in places, with some of the more pantomimic performances seeming slightly self-conscious. But the northern town of Senlis still looks marvellous, thanks to Pierre Lhomme's fluent photography and François de Lamothe's deft production design. Jacques Fonteray's costumes and Françoise Javet's editing are also precise, although some have complained in the past about the pace occasionally being sluggish. However, the standout contribution comes from composer Georges Delerue, whose score slips between the playful and the plaintive to exquisite effect.

The contrast between the films made while the war's wounds were still fresh and those made a century on is striking. Indeed, today's young men and women would struggle to recognise their own country. But director Pat O'Connor and screenwriter Simon Reade strive to bridge the gap in their careful, but lacklustre adaptation of Michael Morpurgo's bestselling children's fiction, Private Peaceful. Covering several of the themes tackled by Steven Spielberg in his bigger budget take on the same author's War Horse, this is supposed to be a family film. But intellectually curious kids could find useful material for school projects in this earnest study of rural poverty in the 1910s and the living hell of the Western Front..

The action opens in an army jail somewhere in France in 1916, as Tommo Peaceful (George MacKay) thinks back on the events that led to his court-martial. Eight years earlier, he had been living happily in a tied cottage in the Devon countryside with his parents Joe (Kyle Summercorn) and Hazel (Maxine Peake) and his older brothers Jimmy (Frasier Huckle) and Charlie (Hero Fiennes-Tiffin). Joe was a forester on the estate of The Colonel (Richard Griffiths) and his wife (Anna Carteret), whose constant state of ill-health encouraged postmistress Grandma Wolf (Frances de la Tour) to entertain hopes of one day becoming the lady of the manor.

However, everything changes when Joe is crushed by a falling tree while trying to save Tommo and Hazel is forced to accept the post of personal maid at the big house so that the family can keep their home. Soon afterwards, Charlie and Tommo decide to quit school and work for the Colonel to make ends meet, while Grandma Wolf keeps an eye on the slow-witted Jimmy (Stephen Kennedy). But a welcome distraction from the daily grind comes in the form of Molly (Izzy Meikle-Small), the daughter of new gamekeeper Mr Monks (Michael Gould), who sneaks off to see the siblings and swim in the nearby river in spite of her father's dire threats. 

Increasingly arrogant after inheriting his wife's fortune, the Colonel fires the Peaceful boys after they have the temerity to save a condemned hunting hound and they are grateful to be hired by Farmer Cox (Keith Bartlett), who treats them fairly while working them hard. However, while the now-teenage Tommo (George MacKay) nurses a secret crush on Molly (Alexandra Roach), Charlie (Jack O'Connell) acts upon his lust for her and she falls pregnant.  Distraught at the dual betrayal, Tommo attends their wedding with little enthusiasm and, when war breaks out, he lies about his age to a recruiting sergeant (Anthony Flanagan) and finds himself in the trenches under the baleful eye of Sergeant Hanley (John Lynch). 

Unwilling to stay at home and play dutiful husband while his pals are having an adventure overseas, Charlie also joins up. But he is less willing to tolerate Hanley's bullying and leads his mates to the nearby village for a night's carousing that sees Tommo fall for the innkeeper's daughter, Anne (Eline Powell). He is left to his own devices, however, when Charlie is wounded and sent back to Blighty. Thus, when Anna is killed by some stray shrapnel, Tommo is close to despair and is hugely relieved when Charlie ignores Molly's pleas and returns to duty in time to protect him in a foxhole after he is shell-shocked during an advance across No Man's Land. 

This decision to place family above a battlefield order gives Hanley the opportunity he has been waiting for and both privates are charged with insubordination and cowardice in the face of the enemy. Appeals for clemency are made to General Douglas Haig (David Yelland) at headquarters safely distant from the enemy. But one Peaceful had to be made to pay the ultimate price and the story ends with Tommo arriving home to make good on his promise to look after Molly and his toddler nephew. 

Played with admirable sincerity by a notable ensemble, this is well-meaning effort to teach younger viewers about the social conditions that existed on the eve of the Great War and the toll that the conflict took on an already put-upon populace. Ably abetted by production designer Adrian Smith and cinematographer Jerzy Zielinski, O'Connor invokes a Hardyesque idyll in the initial sequences before slowly starting to expose the consequences of class division and the first rumblings of proletarian protest. However, Simon Reade's politicised sloganising sounds decidedly clumsy and, with Rachel Portman's insistent score constantly manipulating audience emotions, the overall tone lurches disconcertingly between Ripping Yarns, The Monocled Mutineer, Downton Abbey and the latter incarnation of Upstairs Downstairs. 

The depiction of the villains is particularly awkward, with both Richard Griffiths and John Lynch seeming to have been encouraged to exaggerate caricatured mannerisms, while Frances de la Tour's gold-digger resembles a minor character from a forgotten Dickens novel. By contrast, the principal juveniles frequently feel distractingly anachronistic, with O'Connell's laddish belligerence sitting uncomfortably alongside Roach's simpering flirt and MacKay's sulky self-pity. Thus, impeccable though the intentions might be, this potentially harrowing saga is consistently undermined by mawkish melodramatics.

In 1979, the BBC produced a magnificent adaptation of Vera Brittain's Great War memoir, Testament of Youth. Scripted by Elaine Morgan and directed by Moira Armstrong, this five-part serial managed to capture the faux glamour and harsh reality of the conflict without resorting to heritage pictorialism. It's very much to tele-veteran James Kent and producer David Heyman's credit, therefore, that their 2014 BBC-backed feature version is almost as restrained. Wisely rejecting the cosy accessibility popularised by Downton Abbey, Juliette Towhidi's screenplay may take the odd liberty with its 600-page source. But, even though Swede Alicia Vikander is marginally less persuasive than Cheryl Campbell in conveying Brittain's tragic trajectory, this well-meaning film laudably eschews the glossy sentimentality that so undermined Joe Wright's take on Ian McEwan's Atonement (2007) and Steven Spielberg's vision of Michael Morpurgo's War Horse (2011).

On Armistice Day in November 1918, Vera Brittain (Alicia Vikander) wanders through the rejoicing crowds in London lost in her memories. She thinks back to the summer of 1914, when she went swimming at her Derbyshire home of Melrose with her 18 year-old brother Edward (Taron Egerton) and his inseparable Uppingham School pals, Roland Leighton (Kit Harington) and Victor Richardson (Colin Morgan). Having just turned 20, Vera is keen to become a writer and has pleaded with her parents, Thomas (Dominic West) and Edith (Emily Watson), to allow her to continue her education at Oxford. However, Thomas is an old-fashioned, nouveau riche conservative (who made his money with a pair of paper mills) and he sees no reason why a girl of marriageable age would ever need to study. 

As Edward has successfully applied to New College and Roland is due to go up to Merton, they rally to Vera's cause and her father allows her to sit the entrance exam. Much to her delight, she is offered a place at Somerville, where she comes under the watchful eye of Classics tutor, Hilda Lorimer (Miranda Richardson). However, the crisis foretold by an array of ominous newspaper headlines finally breaks and war is declared on Germany on 4 August. Roland and Edward immediately defer their college places to volunteer for action, although Victor is turned down on the grounds of ill health. Edward enlists with the 10th Sherwood Foresters, where he befriends Geoffrey Thurlow (Jonathan Bailey), while Roland arranges a transfer to the 7th Worcester Regiment so he can get to the Western Front as soon as possible. 

Before he leaves, Roland (whose mother is fleetingly played by Anna Chancellor) manages to evade the beady eyes of chaperone Aunt Bella (Joanna Scanlon) long enough to make his feelings known to Vera and they become engaged. However, when Vera sees the effects of shell shock on Geoffrey and hears dreadful stories of the mounting casualties, she decides to take leave from Oxford in the summer of 1915 to train as a nurse. Initially, she is stationed at a hospital close to her Buxton home, but she applies for the Voluntary Aid Detachment and is sent to the First London General Hospital at Camberwell. But, even though Vera witnesses suffering on a daily basis, it is only when Roland comes home on leave and they spend a few days together by the Suffolk coast that she recognises the psychological damage that trench warfare is inflicting upon the troops. 

She tries to rationalise Roland's emotional distance and looks forward to their Christmas wedding. But, on the day before he is due to come home, Roland is killed by a sniper as he repairs the barbed wire by a full moon and the heartbroken Vera struggles to continue with her duties. The scenario departs somewhat from the book here by condensing her time in Malta, during which Victor (who had been accepted by a top brass in desperate need of fighting men) was blinded at Arras on 9 April 1917 and Geoffrey was killed at Monchy-le-Preux on St George's Day. Vera returns to London in time to minister to Victor before he dies. But Towhidi further tinkers with the timeline by dispatching Vera to nurse Edward at a field hospital at Étaples under the supervision of Matron Hope (Hayley Atwell)., when he was actually wounded in the thigh at the Somme and she cared for him at Camberwell.

Such changes might make dramatic sense, but they will frustrate those familiar with Brittain's own account. The script even has Vera meet future husband George Catlin (Henry Garrett) well in advance of their first encounter following a lengthy correspondence. However, Vera would abandon her vocation after Edward recovered and was sent to the Italian front, where he lost his life at San Sisto Ridge during the Battle of Asiago in June 1918. Having become so disillusioned with the conflict that she readily agreed to nurse German wounded, Brittain became a lifelong pacifist and later returned to Somerville, where she would complete her degree and become friends with fellow writer Winifred Holtby (Alexandra Roach). 

But the final third of the book has been discarded to retain the focus on the war years and the shattering effect on Brittain of losing her brother, her fiancé and her two closest male friends in such a short space of time. By opting not to depict soldiers going over the top, Kent wisely coerces the audience into sharing Vera's imagined impressions of the horrors of the trenches and keeps the emphasis on the broken bodies and tormented minds of the lost generation. Rob Hardy's camera is allowed to rove briefly over the frontline, while another crane shot at Étaples reveals a landscape filled with stretchers in an image that is bound to draw comparison with the Atlanta station sequence in Victor Fleming's Gone With the Wind (1939). 

A soft-focus wild flower montage over a reading of Leighton's 1915 poem `Violets' represents another borderline miscalculation. But Kent (a first-time feature maker, in spite of having an impressive TV CV) largely resists such stylistic flourishes and concentrates on reinforcing the classical sense of time and place impressively generated by Jon Henson's production design and Consolata Boyle's costumes. He might have toned down Max Richter's saccharine score, but he works well with his actors, with Vikander pretty much note perfect whether she is reading from Brittain's letters or capturing her bluestocking assertiveness and virginal vulnerability. She inherited the role from Saoirse Ronan, who had earned an Oscar nomination for Atonement, and it should be noted that the BAFTA electorate has overlooked Testament of Youth entirely. Obviously, accolades are no guarantee of quality, but their absence can only be regarded as a misfortune in the case of a picture that is being so fulsomely marketed as a prestige product.  

Since it was first performed at the Apollo Theatre in London on 9 December 1928, RC Sheriff's acclaimed play, Journey's End, has been frequently adapted for film and television. James Whale also directed the first cinematic version for Gainsborough in 1930, while Heinz Paul produced a German variation, Die andere Seite/The Other Side, the following year. In November 1937, the action was abridged for the BBC by George More O'Ferrall for a live Armistice Day transmission. Intriguingly, this lost interpretation included scene-setting footage from GW Pabst's Westfront 1918 (1930) and Sheriff (who studied at New College between 1931-34) found his own material being reworked for Jack Gold's Aces High (1976), which took the story out of the trenches and into the skies with the Royal Flying Corps. 

The BBC took a second tilt at the material in 1988, when Michael Simpson caused a degree of controversy by staging the raid that Sheriff had left to the audience's imagination. By all accounts, Ben Elton and Richard Curtis based the final episode of Blackadder Goes Forth (1989) on this teleplay. But writer-producer Simon Reade and director Saul Dibb have taken liberties of their own in bringing Journey's End back to the big screen to mark the centenary of Operation Michael, the March 1918 offensive that Sheriff (himself a veteran of Passchendaele) used as the backdrop for his timeless study of troops waiting to go into combat.

On Monday 18 March 1918 near St Quentin in northern France, Lieutenant Osborne (Paul Bettany) urges Captain Stanhope (Sam Claflin) and Second Lieutenant Trotter (Stephen Graham) to finish their card game and join Second Lieutenant Hibbert (Tom Sturridge) in returning to the front line after a few days away from the trenches. Meanwhile, at the British Army Depot at Amiens, Second Lieutenant Raleigh (Asa Butterfield) reports to his uncle, General Raleigh (Rupert Wickham), who tries to advise him against joining C Company simply because Stanhope is an old school friend who is engaged to his sister. 

Relieving Captain Hardy (Miles Jupp), Osborne uses a periscope to check out the German positions some 60 yards away, while Stanhope orders his men to patch up the planking of a trench he suspects wouldn't last five minutes in the face of the expected German offensive. In the cramped subterranean quarters, Mason the cook (Toby Jones) brings candles after Hardy's men remove the electric light bulbs before leaving. Stanhope is furious that they have also taken their ammunition and left his unit with some rusty Mills bombs. But his mood is scarcely improved by the sight of Raleigh, as he doesn't want him to know how much of a toll the war has taken since he was decorated at Vimy Ridge. Trotter joins them for an awkward supper before taking Raleigh on a mud-squelching tour of the trench, while Stanhope guzzles down whiskey under the watchful gaze of Osborne (who is known to his men as `Uncle'), who knows the strain his commander is under, as the men wait for the enemy to make its move. 

The next morning, Stanhope learns that the German push is expected on 21 March and he conveys the news to Trotter and Osborne. However, he withholds it from Raleigh, who has just written a letter to his sister and Stanhope orders him to leave it unsealed because all correspondence has to be censored. Dreading its contents, he asks Osborne to read it aloud and is admonished for suspecting that the hero-worshipping Raleigh would do anything to betray a confidence. 

While Osborne and Raleigh inspect rifles, Stanhope goes to HQ. Reprimanded by the Colonel (Robert Glenister) for reeking of spirits, he is told to select two officers and 10 men to lead a raid on the German trenches to try and grab a prisoner and learn something about the reinforcements being brought into the line. The Colonel suggests Osborne and Raleigh, as the former is a steady chap and the latter knows too green to be afraid. Returning to the bunker, Stanhope confronts Hibbert, whose nerves are equally shot, and pulls his revolver in denying him permission to visit the doctor and be stood down from duty. Lowering the weapon, Stanhope gives Hibbert a reassuring hug and admits that he feels much the same way, but cannot allow himself to show any weakness in front of the men and is grateful that Osborne accepts his mission with stoic grace. He feels queasy, however, when toasting C Company while dining that night with the Colonel and the complacent officer in charge of the bombardment designed to soften up the enemy ahead of the raid. 

Extra provisions arrive at the bunker the next morning, including live chickens (which are, literally, being sent to the slaughter) and Stanhope coerces the Colonel into addressing the rank-and-filers about to go over the top. Left alone, Osborne chats to Raleigh about walking in the New Forest and on the Sussex Downs to take his mind off the ordeal he is about to undergo. He offers a few reassuring words about the smokescreen that will enable them to cross No Man's Land before removing his name tag and leaving his watch on the table for Mason to guard until they return. 

The camera follows the spattered puttees, as Osborne and Raleigh pass along the trench and acknowledge the good luck wishes of their comrades. Stanhope greets them with a cigarette and a smile, as they slither along a gully to the embarkation point. Raleigh vomits with fear, as they wait for the signal to go and Osborne nods to keep him calm. 

Suddenly, the howitzers land in the German trench and the detail scrambles into the line of fire. The jerky handheld camera movements and rapid cuts convey something of the chaos of the manoeuvre, as some men fall and others complete their objective of snatching a prisoner. As they head back, Osborne grabs the collar of a wounded fellow and tries to drag him towards safety. But, while Ernst (Eirik Bar) is given a hot cup of tea and the Colonel congratulates Stanhope on a job well done, he laments the fact that six of his men have been killed and that Raleigh rather than Osborne made it home. Indeed, when Raleigh sinks on to Osborne's bunk in traumatised exhaustion, Stanhope berates him for showing such little respect. Having ripped into Hibbert for getting drunk on champagne and boasting obnoxiously about his sexual conquests, Stanhope tears off another strip when Raleigh accepts an invitation to eat bread and soup with the men rather than dine with his fellow officers and Mason skulks in the kitchen with a pained expression, as Stanhope breaks down and sobs on Raleigh's shoulder at losing his friend. 

As the day of the expected attack dawns, Mason wakes Stanhope with tea and gives Trotter and Raleigh sandwiches to take up top. Hibbert is reluctant to leave the bunker, but Stanhope shames him into leaving with Mason, who jokes about popping back down around 10am to peel the spuds for lunch. An unbearable silence descends, as the men wait for the Germans to attack. A flare shoots into the grey sky before the first shells and gas canisters land. Stanhope and Trotter try to rally the sitting ducks under their command and the former helps Raleigh on to Osborne's bed when he is hit in the back by some shrapnel. For the first time since his arrival, Stanhope talks to Raleigh like an old friend, as he urges him to hang in there until the stretcher bearers arrive. But he fails to survive and Stanhope is blown backwards by the force of an explosion, as he attempts to climb the steps to the trench. 

On 22 March, Margaret (Rose Reade) opens the letter that Raleigh had written on his first night with C Company. Over in France, German soldiers wearing gas masks scour the trench for survivors. But there are none and an overhead shot reveals the extent to which the post has been obliterated during the opening salvoes of what came to be known as the Spring Offensive, which lasted three months and claimed over 700,000 lives. Within a month, however, the captured territory had been retaken by the Allied forces. As a closing caption reveals, one million more men were to die before the Armistice was finally signed on 11 November 1918. 

By drawing on the novelisation that Sheriff wrote with Vernon Bartlett, Dibb and Reade are able to open out the stage play without straying too far from its enduringly poignant core. However, the compelling action takes place in the bunker and adjoining trench that has been designed with chilling simplicity by Kristian Milsted and photographed with boggy authenticity by Laurie Rose. Markedly more effective than Hildur Gudnadottir and Natalie Holt's nuanced, but superfluous score, Bryn Thomas's sound design is also key to conveying the claustrophobic dankness of the setting, as each breath seems to resound as loudly as a mortar, as the men wait for their invisible foe to make its inevitable move. 

Underplaying impeccably to capture the inimitably British sense of sang froid, the leads feel like pals who have already been through hell together. Yet the formality imposed by class remains, as Sam Claflin adopts a different tone of address to working men Stephen Graham and Toby Jones, even though he has much more admiration for them than he does Robert Glenister's desk-bound colonel and his pampered aides. Forever gulping down Dutch courage and clinging to the last vestiges of the heroism that earned him the Military Cross, Claflin steadily unravels as the wide-eyed Asa Butterfield's arrival forces him to face the grim reality of his situation. But Paul Bettany also excels as the composed and kindly schoolmaster, whose ease with his charges reminds us that Sheriff earned an Oscar nomination for Sam Wood's adaptation of James Hilton's bestseller, Goodbye Mr Chips (1939). Only Tom Sturridge strikes a wrong note, but that is the point of his character, as his psychological distress is partly feigned. 

Dibb stages the battle sequences with suitable solemnity to emphasise the futility and horror of the exchanges. Yet he also includes a number of neat touches, such as the hospitality meted out to the captured German and the way in which Graham uses food as a coping mechanism. The exchange between Butterfield and his uncle and the sequence in a cosy Hampshire home a world away from the Western Front feel more extraneous. But this works best when it sticks to the manuscript, most notably when Bettany seeks to distract Butterfield with happy memories and quotations from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland.

Surprisingly few films have been made about the Great War over the last four years. Since Ermanno Olmi produced Greenery Will Bloom Again about the Asiago plateau campaign, Austrian Ernst Gossner has visited the Alpine theatre in The Silent Mountain (both 2014), Dmitri Meskhiev has commemorated the 1st Russian Women's Battalion of Death in Battalion, Paolo Cevoli has recreated the Battle of Caporetto in Private (both 2015) and the César-winning Albert Dupontel has explored the last days before the Armistice in See You Up There (2017). In Britain, James Kent has adapted Vera Brittain's memoir in Testament of Youth (2014) and Saul Dibb has remade RC Sheriff's classic stage study of trench life, Journey's End (2017). New Zealander Peter Jackson has also raided the Imperial War Museum archives for a hand-colourised 3-D documentary that will be shown on BBC2 on Armistice Night. But Hollywood singularly failed to contribute anything to the centenary remembrance, beside Richard Lanni's Sgt Stubby: An Unlikely Hero. Nevertheless, this animated biopic of the most decorated dog in US military history will have served its purpose if it introduces a few younger viewers to the grim realities of the Great War. That said, this is not solely aimed at kids, as Lanni and co-scenarist Mike Stokey II have opted against allowing the eponymous Boston terrier to talk and have wisely kept his actions as authentically canine as possible. 

Flashing back from the Western Front in March 1918, the action opens with Margaret O'Brien (Helena Bonham Carter) explaining how the United States joined the war against Germany on the side of the British and the French. Some time in 1917, while her brother, Robert Conroy (Logan Lerman), was marching through New Haven, Connecticut with his platoon of Doughboys, he had spotted a hungry dog on the pavement and tossed him a biscuit. This proved to be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Needing every friend he can get, the scrappy pup digs his way under the Yale University barrack fence and makes such a good impression during parade on Sgt Casburn (Jason Ezzell) that Conroy is allowed to keep him, much to the dismay of his buddy, Elmer Olsen (Jordan Beck), who doesn't like dogs. But tent mate Hans Schroeder (Jim Pharr) agrees with the drill sergeant that Stubby makes a fine mascot and he romps alongside Conroy as he goes through basis training. Even Colonel Ty (Pharr) is impressed when Stubby learns to salute. But he growls when he first sees a gas mask and whimpers when he gets a whiff of the tear gas that Casburn has been using to acclimatise his rookies to the conditions they are going to experience in the trenches. 

Nevertheless, Stubby keeps square-bashing alongside Conroy and enjoys playing catch with a baseball. When orders come to leave for Europe, however, Conroy has to leave Stubby in the cookhouse so that he will be safe. But the devoted dog slips his lead and not only chases the troop train, but also stows away inside a packing crate to be winched aboard the ship about to cross the Atlantic. Using his keen sense of smell, he tracks Conroy to his cabin and is allowed to stay on board the Minnesota when his salute charms General Edwards (Brian Cook).

As Margaret takes up the story, she knew nothing about Stubby following her brother, as she scoured the newspapers for stories about the troops beating the German U-boats and reaching France. A map shows their route across country to Chemin des Dames, where they would engage the enemy for the first time. Stubby makes himself useful straight away by chasing the rats into No Man's Land. He also reveals a gift for finding bodies buried under rubble after the trench comes under attack. But he takes a snarling dislike to French soldier Gaston Baptiste (Gérard Depardieu) until he gets to sample some cheese and happily toddles after him when Baptiste announces that Conroy, Olsen and Schroeder have been selected for special reconnaissance duties. 

They are moved to a billet behind the lines and Stubby is keen to follow wherever Conroy leads. Thus, he trots beside his master and Baptiste as they ride on horseback through the countryside to a vantage point that allows them to spy on the Germans. They spot a consignment of mustard gas canisters being delivered and Stubby races back to base to warn the soldiers and then charges through the nearby village to sound the alarm. Conroy plucks him up by the collar just as the foul green gas curls through the streets and Baptiste covers Stubby's snout with a wet cloth to protect him as they shelter inside a barn. 

Margaret reveals how her sibling's letters were full of news about Stubby's heroism and how everybody adored him. Baptiste becomes fonder than most when he catches a rabbit and they get to feast on a stew that is far better than the slop served up by the cook (Guillaume Sentou). While the French soldiers teach Olsen and Schroeder how to play pétanque (after Stubby steals the cochonnet), Baptiste takes Conroy for a walk to a hill overlooking the plain. He shows him a photograph of his wife and three daughters, while Conroy explains how Margaret had raised him and his two sisters after their parents had died. 

Such moments of calm are few and far between, however, and Stubby is soon in the thick of the action once more. When a Doughboy is wounded in No Man's Land, Stubby jumps out of the trench and rushes through the barbed wire and shell craters to find him and bark out directions to the stretcher bearers. French and American troops alike turn in admiration at the plucky dog, who risked his life to save one of their own. 

As the spring of 1918 passes, the 26th (Yankee) Division of the 102nd Infantry Regiment is transferred to Seicheprey. With the Germans attempting a desperate push to break the defences and advance on Paris, this became the site of the heaviest fighting experienced by US troops during the conflict. Stubby refuses to flinch, however, and not only helps Conroy and Baptiste capture three German soldiers who infiltrated their trench, but also saved lives by grabbing a stick grenade in his mouth and running to a deserted part of the line. Conroy persuades a doctor to care for him and Stubby finds himself in the same ambulance as Schroeder. 

Baptiste is sent back to his regiment shortly afterwards and Conroy put a brave face on the Three Musketeers being broken up in his letters home. Having retaken Seicheprey, the Americans were holed up in the ruins of the town when Conroy was diagnosed with Spanish Flu and taken to the field hospital. He was reunited with Stubby when he staggered into the compound with a bandaged paw after stealing sausages from a German barbecue (a bit of artistic licence here, one suspects) and, together with Olsen and Schroeder, they got to spend a furlough in Paris. Feted wherever they go, the friends take photographs in front of famous landmarks and Conroy sends them home to his sisters. 

Back on duty at Marcheville, Stubby sniffs out a German spy and is promoted to the honorary rank of sergeant. Corporal Conroy jokes that he now outranks him and he is delighted to be reunited with Baptiste. It's now September 1918 and the Allies are certain that they have broken German morale. Yet the war drags on and Stubby gets to meet Captain George S. Patton (Nicholas Rulon) when he rolls up on a tank during the final advance. Yet, even though an armistice is agreed for 11am on 11 November, the fighting continues until the last second. Conroy jumps into a trench to help Baptiste in a stand-off with two Germans in gas masks. They let them escape when whistles are blown to signal the end of hostilities. But not everyone is so lucky, as Olsen is killed during the futile advance and Stubby takes his helmet to Schroeder, who finds the bullet hole in the rim. 

Baptiste says his farewells before the Americans ship out and Stubby is hoisted on top of a car at the quayside so that the crowds can see him. A reporter takes his picture and a match cut shows us the real Sgt Stubby in a black-and-white snapshot, as a caption reveals that he took part in 17 battles in four campaigns during his 18 months in service. A selection of photos show Stubby at the head of parades and posing with Conroy. But they only hint at the fact that he became a hero on his return and met three presidents before finally passing away in 1926. He might not have gone on to be a movie star like Rin Tin Tin, but he was preserved and remains on display in the Smithsonian Institute. 

Animators seemingly can't stop themselves from anthropomorphising animals and there are moments when Stubby's wide eyes, pugnacious attitude and jaunty saunter err towards Disneyfied cuteness. But, even though the dialogue isn't always particularly sophisticated, the characterisation is needlessly bland and Patrick Doyle's score is sometimes distractingly effusive, this is a thoughtful attempt to convey the nightmarish nature of war for young and old alike. Moreover, despite the chilling gas sequence, it avoids demonising the enemy.

The switch from computer-generated layouts to a facsimile hand-drawn style for the debriefing segments is particularly effective in the way it reminds viewers of the gravity of the situation Stubby finds himself in. That said, Helena Bonham Carter's narration sounds a touch twee in places, as does the stereotypical bonhomie voiced by Gérard Depardieu. Yet, even though he passes over the carnage completely, Lanni largely keeps sentimentality at bay, even when Stubby is wounded and Olsen is killed (off-screen). 

Released 14 years after the Armistice, Broken Lullaby was one of the least typical films that Ernst Lubitsch produced during the Hollywood phase of his enduringly influential career. Coming between the Maurice Chevalier musicals, The Smiling Lieutenant (1931) and One Hour With You (1932), and emerging a few months before the screwball masterpiece, Trouble in Paradise (1932), this adaptation of Maurice Rostand's 1930 play, The Man I Killed, was one of a number of pacifist talkies to emerge in the wake of Lewis Milestone's Oscar-winning interpretation of Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front (1930). But, while the Berlin-born Lubitsch sought to remind audiences of the pitiless folly of conflict at a time when tensions were starting to simmer in Europe, François Ozon prioritises human emotion over historical lesson in his handsome monochrome remake, Frantz, 

In the small German town of Quedlinburg in 1919, Paula Beer goes to lay flowers on the grave of Anton von Lucke, the fiancé she lost during the Great War. She is surprised to learn that a French stranger has left some white roses and Von Lucke's mother, Marie Gruber, urges her not to mention the incident to her doctor husband, Ernst Stötzner. He is busy treating the war-wounded Johann von Bülow, who deeply resents the humiliation heaped upon Germany by the Treaty of Versailles. But he is also keen for life to go on and asks Stötzner for his permission to propose to Beer. However, she finds his suggestion that he could help her forget Von Lucke distasteful and pulls her hand away when he tries to press his suit. 

During supper, there is a knock at the door and Beer opens it to see Pierre Niney scurrying away down the street. The following morning, he is crying quietly at the graveside when Beer arrives at the churchyard and he summons the courage to visit Stötzner at his surgery. Refusing to treat a Frenchman because they are all responsible for his son's death, Stötzner orders Niney to leave his house and refuses to discuss the matter with Gruber and Beer when they come to Von Lucke's unchanged room to see what Niney wanted. 

Keen to meet Niney, Beer leaves a note at his hotel and declines Von Bülow's invitation to a forthcoming ball. Niney comes to the house and reveals that he knew Von Lucke in Paris before the war. He chooses his words carefully under Stötzner's suspicious scrutiny, but Beer and Gruber urge him to recall past meetings and we flashback to the muted colours of the Louvre, as the friends discuss the paintings before dancing with some pretty girls in a bar. Stötzner closes his eyes in anguish as he listens to the anecdotes, but Beer thanks Niney for bringing them some comfort. 

She accompanies him to the cemetery the next day and explains that Von Lucke was buried in France and that the grave is merely a focus for the family's mourning. Beer also discloses that they know nothing about his fate other than the date he died and admits that she sometimes imagines him coming home. She recites his favourite Verlaine poem in French and Niney compliments her on her accent. Beer asks about the nature of their friendship and whether they competed over a sweetheart. But he lowers his eyes and insists that they were nothing more than pals. 

They wander into the hills and she shows him the place where Von Lucke proposed. She is surprised that Niney knows so little about her and fails to notice his discomfort when she talks about how they met in a bookshop at students. However, she watches him swim in his underwear when he complains of being hot and suggests a dip in the lake. As he lies on the grass, she sees the scars on his torso. But he is reluctant to discuss them and claims that his sole wound is Von Lucke. 

The colour drains from the imagery again as Gruber tells Beer that she sees many similarities between Niney and her son. Over supper, she is pleased to discover that they both played the violin, but is sorry to hear that Niney has ceased to play in an orchestra since the war because he can no longer hear the notes. Stötzner shows him Von Lucke's room and confides the guilt he feels at forcing the boy to do his duty for the Fatherland. He shows Niney his son's violin (which he considers to be his heart) and asks him to take it back to Paris. But, while Niney refuses, he agrees to play after looking through a photograph album and listening to Beer reading Von Lucke's last letter. His mind harks back (in colour) to the lessons he used to give his friend before he starts to play. Enchanted by the music, Stötzner and Gruber put their heads together and Beer is suitably moved to accompany Niney on the piano. But the intensity of the situation proves too much for him and he faints. 

Beer walks Niney back to his hotel and he invites her to the Spring Ball. She accepts and Gruber accompanies her to buy a new dress, while Niney returns to  his room to find a parcel containing a small coffin. Von Bülow is furious with Beer for bringing a Frenchman to a German festival. But the local girls are pleased to have a handsome young man to dance with and Beer ignores Von Bülow's rebuke to swirl away to the oompah band. She accepts Niney's jacket over her shoulder as they walk home, but his night is spoilt when a drunken reveller spits on him after he helps him back to his feet. He returns to his room and tries to write Beer a letter revealing the real reason for his visit, but he screws the paper into a ball. 

The next day, Stötzner joins his friends in the hotel bar and is put out when they refuse his offer of a drink because he has befriended Niney. He regrets that they blame him for their losses when they all supported the war and sent their sons to the trenches with cheers and celebrated each victory without a thought for the French counterparts mourning their dead. As he leaves, he bumps into Niney and asks him to supper. But Niney is unnerved by the doctor's party singing a patriotic song while he waits for his key and has to stand his ground when Von Bülow accuses him of dishonouring Von Lucke's memory by trying to steal his girl. 

When Niney fails to keep his appointment that night, Beer goes looking for him and finds him in the windswept churchyard. He insists on telling her what happened on the Marne on 15 September 1918, as his patrol was marching through the blasted countryside (in washed-out colour). Enemy shelling drove him into an empty trench where he found himself face-to-face with Von Lucke. His eyes were wide with terror, but he was armed and Niney shot him before he lost his nerve. He fell backwards and a stunned Niney had edged towards him as chaos reined around him. 

As Beer begins to sob, Niney recalls how a blast had thrown him on top of the corpse and he had wiped the mud off Von Lucke's. He had discovered that his rifle was unloaded and, in a desperate bid to learn something about the man he had killed, he had searched his pockets and found his last letter to Beer. She curses him for lying about the happy times they had shared in Paris and Niney admits he has been a coward. But he confesses his need to unburden himself of his guilt and insists that he has come to love Von Lucke with each new detail he has learnt about his life and personality. Distraught, Beer hurries away and leaves Niney alone in the darkness after he promises to tell Stötzner and Gruber the truth before his train leaves the following day. 

However, Beer meets him at the inn and escorts him to the station without letting him return to the house. She claims to have broken the news and, as she sees Niney on to his train, she agrees to let him write to them in the future. But she has actually told Gruber and Stötzner that Niney has been called home to see his sick mother and has made no mention of his role in their son's demise. So, as they sit down to lunch, they merely regret that they didn't get a chance to say goodbye and hope that he can return one day. 

Beer tends to Von Lucke's grave and is stirred by the sound of the wind rustling the trees that had so moved Niney. She visits the churchyard in all weathers and constantly re-reads letters from the front. But she now hears Niney's voice reading the messages that Von Lucke had written in French to prevent his parents from snooping. Crushed by the betrayal of a man she had grown to love because he so reminded her of the lover she had lost, Beer wanders in the direction of the lake and walks into the water. She is only saved by a passing stranger, who recognises her as Von Lucke's fiancée, and she implores him to say nothing to Gruber and Stötzner. 

Confined to her bed with a chill, she dreams that Von Lucke returns to play the violin for his parents. But, when a letter finally comes from Niney, she burns it in the stove in her room and makes up news about Niney resuming his career as a musician and promising to play Von Lucke's violin again. She tries to reply, but goes to confession instead and is comforted by Torsten Michaelis telling her to forgive Niney and to continue his lie to spare Gruber and Stötzner further pain. But the priest senses that Beer has feelings for Niney and echoes Stötzner's words about the need for life to go on.  As she leaves the church, Von Bülow apologises for his behaviour towards Stötzner and Niney and asks for her hand again. She tells Gruber, who urges her to think carefully, as she could have a much nicer life with Niney. 

After a few days, Beer writes to Niney and suggests that he might like to come back to Quedlinburg, as she has now come to terms with the reasons for his deception. But the letter is returned unopened and Gruber persuades Beer to go to Paris to find him. She feels eyes staring at her when required to show her passport on the train and averts her gaze from the ruins of a town that are reflected in the window. Despite speaking decent French, she feels like a stranger as the taxi drops her at the hotel where Von Lucke had stayed as a student and feels queasy as she sits on the bed, as it is clearly used for immoral purposes. 

The next day, she goes to Niney's last address and books a ticket to see his orchestra play at the Opéra. As she sits in a café, she is unnerved when some soldiers enter and the patrons stand to launch into a furiously patriotic rendition of  `La Marseillaise'. She is even more discomfited when the Édouard Manet painting that Niney had mentioned in the Louvre depicts a suicide victim. Further distressed by his absence from the orchestra, Beer makes inquiries at a hospital that lead her to the cemetery at Passy. Much to her relief, the man who took his own life is Niney's uncle and she tracks down widow Jeanne Ferron to ask about her nephew. She smiles when Beer tells her story and sends her to the country house of her husband's sister, Cyrielle Clair. 

Niney is delighted to see her and asks after Stötzner and Gruber with an earnestness that unsettles his mother. But she invites Beer to stay before Niney shows her around the grounds. She informs him that the whole family has forgiven him for killing Von Lucke and he is pathetically grateful for their kindness, as he feared he would lose his mind if they abandoned him. He introduces her to old friend Alice de Lencquesaing, who is due to sing after dinner and Beer is put out by the closeness between the pair. Yet De Lencquesaing lends her a dress and thanks her for accepting Niney, as she had lost her own brother in the war and had feared that her childhood friend would not be able to survive his guilt. 

At dinner, however, Beer is flustered by table talk about the street celebrations that had broken out when peace was declared and becomes so jealous of the looks that Niney gives De Lencquesaing while they accompany her that Beer plays out of tune and rushes to her room. Niney tries to be reassuring, but he backs away when Beer closes in for a kiss and she wishes she had stayed in Germany. She is even more relieved to be leaving when she hears Clair pleading with Niney not to jeopardise his relationship with De Lencquesaing, as no one else would be so willing to have him as a husband. As Beer leaves, Clair begs her not to torment Niney, but Beer suggests that it's his feelings for Von Lucke that are the root of his troubles. 

Niney drives Beer to the station at Saulieu and invites her to the wedding. She tearfully declines and Niney kisses her softly on the lips. He goes to speak, but she insists that things cannot change and she puts on a brave face when he exhorts her to be happy. She writes to Stötzner and Gruber to reassure them that she is having a wonderful time and spends her evenings listening to Niney play or accompanying him at private recitals. The elderly couple clasps hands as Gruber reads about the Manets at the Louvre and the film ends (and returns to colour for the final time), as Beer sits in front of `The Suicide' next to a young man who resembles Niney and confides that the picture makes her feel alive. 

Ozon has explored the theme of bereavement several times, most notably in Sous le Sable (2000) and The New Girlfriend (2014). But, in revisiting the early years of the last century for the first time since he adapted the Elizabeth Taylor novel, Angel (2007), Ozon seems uncertain where to lay the emotional emphasis in a story that's as much about repressed emotion and closeted homosexuality as it is about grief, female emancipation and the perils of extreme nationalism. Even though Lubitsch was working in Pre-Code Hollywood, he was unable to broach Rostand's subtext and was forced to let doctor Lionel Barrymore and wife Louise Carter accept Phillips Holmes as Nancy Carrolls husband without knowing he had bayoneted their son, Tom Douglas, in a moment of cowardly panic. 

In this revision, Ozon implies that Niney shoots Von Lucke because he can't live with the shame of falling in love at first sight with an enemy soldier. Yet he still spends the night lying as close as possible to his corpse in a moment of foxhole necrophilia that entices Niney into inventing the bromantic backstory that he can share with his beloved's parents and fiancée in order to keep him alive in his memory and to assuage the crushing sense of remorse that is so rarely discussed in screen studies of combat-related post-traumatic stress. By stressing the human aspect of the tale, however, Ozon plays down the political element, although this could still be read as a post-Brexit parable on the brotherhood of nations. 

Wistful without being winsome, Beer copes well enough with being the narrative focus, as she strives to make sense of her feelings for Niney, while seeking to avoid causing her surrogate parents further pain. But Ozon fails to establish the precise nature of the love she feels for Von Lucke and, thus, with Niney often seeming frustratingly passive, her desire feels less confused than contrived, particularly when she realises that she has an unexpected rival in the masculinely attired De Lencquesaing. But Clair and De Lencquesaing are no substitute for Stötzner and Gruber and the picture's emotional intensity is much depleted by their prolonged absence.  

On the technical side, the influence of the great Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich is readily evident, as is the use of mirror imagery borrowed from Douglas Sirk and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Yet, by opting to shoot predominantly in shimmering black and white in order to evoke the look of the Heimat films produced in inter-war Germany, Ozon and cinematographer Pascal Marti invite comparisons with Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon (2009) that only serve to make the scene exposing Von Bülow's Prussian patriotism feel all the more cumbersome. Equally ineffectual are the fleeting glimpses of colour in the otherwise authentically sombre postwar milieux created by production designer Michel Barthélémy and costumier Pascaline Chavanne, which feel as laboured as the fallacious flashbacks, whose faux nostalgia is reinforced by the manipulative Mahleresque motifs in Philippe Rombi's score. In short, for all Ozon's customary grace and taste, this classical melodrama lacks the fabled `Lubitsch touch'. 

While the majority of features about the 1914-18 conflict have focused on the Western Front, a handful have examined the impact of the `War to End All Wars' on women. Now, Bertrand Tavernier's Life and Nothing But (1989), Jean-Pierre Jeunet's A Very Long Engagement (2004) and François Ozon's Frantz (2016) are joined by Xavier Beauvois's The Guardians, a grindingly authentic adaptation of a 1924 Ernest Pérochon novel that centres on the female members of a Limousin family striving to maintain their farm while the menfolk are in uniform. 

As gas hangs on the air over corpses lying in the 1915 mud, formidable matriarch Hortense Sandrail (Nathalie Baye) and her daughter, Solange (Laura Smet), are ploughing a field at Paridier Farm under the watchful eye of the grey-bearded Henri (Gilbert Bonneau). The following year, Hortense's son, Constant (Nicolas Giraud), comes home on leave and shows his medal at the kitchen table. He calmly reveals that the victory was a backs to the wall affair and the country might have been doomed if they had failed. But he is greeted as a conquering hero at the school where he used to teach, as his replacement (Anne-Cécile Le Quere) has taught the children to recite a poem about the atrocities committed by the Boche. 

Constant urges his mother to modernise while Solange's husband, Clovis (Olivier Rabourdin), is away and he approves her plan to buy a combine harvester and share it with some of her neighbours to secure a government grant. He mentions that warfare is also becoming more mechanised, but says little about his experiences. Indeed, he finds himself consoling Solange when she reveals that she can't have children. But his visit is soon over and he wanders into the morning mist along the road abutting the farm, prompting Hortense to write to her other son, Georges (Cyril Descours), so he knows she is thinking about him. 

Needing help with the harvest, Hortense applies to Edgar (Xavier Maly) and he arranges for 20 year-old orphan Francine Riant (Iris Bry) to move to the farm. She puts a crucifix on the wall over her bed and helps with the chores, while also learning from Henri how to make miget out of stale bread and wine. He takes a shine to her, but Solange and Marguerite (Mathilde Viseux) - who is Clovis's daughter from his first marriage - barely say a word to her, even though she works hard cutting corn for the other workers to bundle up and stack in the field. A slow tracking shot captures the back-breaking nature of the toil before everyone tucks into a simple, but well-appreciated lunch. 

Clovis returns and confides that the war is a monumental folly because they fight over the same patch of ground for days on end. Moreover, the Germans are not monsters, but ordinary blokes like themselves. Hortense worries when she sees him drinking so much, but Henri assures her that this is normal for the front, as the officers make the men booze to give them courage. Keen to do his bit in the fields, Clovis joins the harvesters and tentatively renews his intimacy with Solange. But he soon returns to his regiment, as the locals listen to the roll call of the dead in the parish church. 

Shortly after Solange informs Francine that she wishes to retain her for another year, Georges comes home on leave. He is amused that Clovis keeps sending instructions back from the trenches, as he knows his mother is quite capable of running the farm on her own. Hearing Francine sing, Georges takes her into the forest to chop firewood and promises to show her where he keeps his hidden treasure. He asks her to write to him and she is pleased that someone is thinking about her. Having developed a crush on Georges, she is relieved when Hortense promises to keep her on after the war ends and, as the snow settles, she starts to feel part of the family after being shown how to use the patterned wooden butter moulds. 

As 1917 dawns, Solange receives news that Clovis has been captured and sent to a POW camp at Mannheim. Hortense takes down the atlas to show her whereabouts in Germany her husband is being held and reassures her that he is now safe. However, Constant is still in the firing line and Hortense collapses when Henri tells her that he has been killed. She remains stoic beneath a black veil during the memorial service, but it pains her that she is unable to bury her son because his body cannot be found. Francine does her best to console Hortense, Solange and Marguerite and she smiles coyly when Edgar suggests that she will make someone a good wife, when she is presented with her diploma and the bursary that the state awards her on her 21st birthday. 

In a bid to cheer up Marguerite, Francine buys her a butterfly broach. But Marguerite (who had hoped to marry Georges on his return) has found their letters and realised that he has fallen for Francine and she orders her out of the room. Hortense knows nothing of this tension, however, as she watches Francine operate the new harvester and hopes that they have turned the corner and won't have to sell any more livestock to make ends meet. They also attract new customers when the United States joins the war and Doughboys come from the nearby camp to buy vegetables. Solange is happy to chat with them. But the returning Georges is furious that they are having a glorified camping holiday while Constant is rotting in the mud and he is enduring nightmares in which he single-handedly fights off a German unit, only for the last man he kills to have his face when his gas mask falls off. 

Francine reminds Georges that the Americans are young boys far from home and he calms down. He invites her to see his treasure in the woods and they ride in his horse buggy to the lichen-covered dolmen that he finds so enchanting. The camera follows their hands, as they brush against the soft surface and Francine allows George to seduce her. She smiles at the thought of their intimacy when she returns to her room. But Marguerite calls Georges a hypocrite when he collects her from the railway station, as she had always thought that they would be sweethearts. 

Henri sells the Doughboys some of his hooch and they come to help with the threshing. Hortense is concerned that Solange is far too interested in the handsome John (Yann Bean) and spots her getting dressed after a tryst by the wood pile. Suzanne (Laurence Havard) warns Hortense that the neighbours are getting jealous of the business she does with the camp and hints that they believe the Americans patronise them because Solange is so free with her favours. 

Hortense also notices the looks exchanged by Georges and Francine, as they work in the courtyard, and feel sorry for Marguerite. On the night before he leaves, Georges makes love with Francine in her bed, but omits to mention of her by name when he makes his farewells after supper. Thus, when he sees Francine resisting John's unwelcome advances as his mother is driving him to the station, Georges asks her to fire Francine and she tuts that she has the loose morals of her late mother. 

Yet she finds it hard to sack Francine, as she is well aware that she has worked hard and done nothing to have her integrity questioned. She is wounded when Francine calls her heartless and feels a pang of remorse when Solange reprimands her for sacrificing Francine and for believing that she had slept with John, when she had merely fooled around before remembering her duty to Clovis. 

Refusing her severance pay, Francine goes to work for La Monette (Marie-Julie Maille), a charbonnier who needs help with a new batch of charcoal and with caring for her young daughter, Jeanne (Madeleine Beauvois). She quickly realises that Francine is pregnant, but is happy for her to stay, as Jeanne enjoys being read bedtime stories. As winter sets in, Georges writes to Hortense to describe the conditions in the trenches and admit that he is resigned to dying before peace can be declared. 

Unable to understand why Georges returns her letters unopened, Francine accepts La Monette's reassurance that fatherhood will soften his heart. But, when La Monette is widowed at the start of 1918, Francine becomes concerned that Georges will never know that he has a child. Edgar suggests that she writes to Hortense in the hope that she will pass the news to Georges. However, she throws the missive on the fire and suppresses a bitter sob at the way things have turned out. 

Shortly after Solange takes receipt of a new tractor, Georges returns and Hortense takes Marguerite with her to meet him at the station. He has been wounded in the leg, but he has survived and Hortense hopes that he can settle down with his new bride. However, when she sees Francine leaving the church after her baby has been baptised, Hortense feels faint at the realisation that she might never get to know her grandchild. 

Clovis returns some time in 1919 and hugs Solange when she shows him the tractor and the combine harvester. However, a dispute arises with Georges over who is to farm Constant's land and Marguerite sides with her father. Solange storms out in frustration because they are bickering when Constant's body remains undiscovered in some distant field. But Hortense is just glad to have them home and would rather they were at each other's throats than in mortal danger. As the film ends in 1920, Francine is singing with a small band at a dance in the village. The lyrics speak of the folly of love and commitment and she smiles as the couple waltz around the floor. But has she noticed Georges gazing up at her with a look of longing?

In 2010, Beauvois explored the impact of warfare on an enclosed community in Of Gods and Men, which focused on a monastic order under threat during the 1996 Algerian Civil War. The farm at Le Paridier may be less hermitic, but the lifestyle is equally austere and its continued existence is similarly jeopardised by the vicissitudes of war. Indeed, Beauvois and co-writers Frédérique Moreau and Marie-Julie Maille (who also edited the picture) pay as much attention to the seasonal cycle as they do the fears and feelings of their characters or the story's social, feminist and provincialist subtexts. Consequently, more time is devoted to Hortense toiling than emoting and, even then, she is frequently shown in long shot, as a diminutive figure on a flat expanse. 

Clearly, Beauvois and cinematographer Caroline Champetier studied the paintings of Jean-François Millet and the rustic realist Barbizon School, as well as such films as Georges Rouquier's Farrebique (1946), René Allio's I, Pierre Rivière (1976) and Ermanno Olmi's The Tree of Wooden Clogs (1978). But production designer Yann Megard also deserves credit for finding such a wonderfully evocative farm setting, while Anaïs Romand's costumes are as faultless as Michel Legrand's sparingly used flute score, which reinforces the narrative's measured pacing. 

The performances are also impeccable. Reuniting with Beauvois after Le Petit Lieutenant (2004), Nathalie Baye reminds us why she is considered one of French cinema's finest actresses and there is added poignancy to her scenes with Laura Smet, as this is the first time she has appeared with her daughter by rock legend Johnny Hallyday. However, the debuting Iris Bry also makes a deep impression as Francine, with her freckled poise, steady gaze and auburn hair often giving her the look of a young Isabelle Huppert. she also sings beautifully and can count herself highly unlucky to have lost the César for Most Promising Actress to Camélia Jordana in Yvan Attal's Le Brio. 

There is one misstep, however, as the depiction of Georges's nightmare is too slight and stylised to do justice to the horrors of trench warfare with which most viewers will be well acquainted. Besides, Beauvois has already made his point about the senseless brutality of the conflict with the opening shot of the bodies bestrewing the battlefield. But the rest of the action is staged with an integrity and discretion that gives small moments like Francine taking Jeanne for a walk so La Monette can grieve alone the simple ring of truth that echoes throughout this quietly devastating drama.