Le bois des amants (1960) Online

It was not the first time Claude Autant-Lara had broached the impossible love subject.His "le diable au corps " from Raymond Radiguet remains one of the great classics of the French cinema.It's not good news this time.

WW2,in occupied Brittany:a military German woman comes to visit her husband ,a Kommandatur officer .She is billeted on a local inhabitant ,a widow (Françoise Rosay) ,whose son is part of the resistance fighters .What will happen next?Shall I have to spell it out? The best sequence is the depiction of the réveillon (Christmas's eve dinner) at the German military command.But it is impossible to believe in the two lovers' impossible love.

Autant-Lara did not probably like this job.He was about to make his most daring work ,"Tu ne tueras point", which featured two of the actors of "le bois des amants" ,Laurent Terzieff and Horst Frank.

With titles such as Ciboulette, Fric-Frac, Douce, Le Diable au corps, Lauberge Rouge and La Traversee de Paris punctuating a very tasty CV we were perhaps entitled to expect more from Claude Autant-Lara than this suet pudding snatched from the jaws of a soufflé' but on the other hand he did shoot it in his 60th year at a time when he had, to all intents and purposes denied the Holocaust so if the requisite allowances are made it could be worse. Plot-wise it's fairly straightforward; we're in Occupied Brittany in the middle of the war where a newly married (three months) bride missing her German officer husband, turns up to be near him. She is fluent in French which always helps, of course, and sent to live with widow Francoise Rosay so now all we need is something to HAPPEN and the script duly obliges in the shape of Rosay's son, a Resistance member, who parachutes in from England to guide the English bombers to a prime target; so now we have two young people thrown together and nature waiting in the wings to take its course before ensuring that it all ends in tears. Worth a look, certainly, but if I sold it higher than that you'd call me misguided and/or a liar and you'd be right.