The War Is Over (1966) User Reviews

A Film that Captures Life in the Midst of Politics

[halfwayintelligent · 8/10 · 14 October 2007]

Resnais really impressed me with this film. He uses real locations and finds subtle atmospheric things that almost never turn up in movies. One sees the way a shadow of a tree moves gently back and forth on the wall as two people relax in bed, the way a gust of wind briefly animates a woman's hair in a subway tunnel.

The movie successfully combines an account of resistance to Franco's Spain from an ex-patriot living in Paris (played by Montand), and his life outside of politics. We see not only his political views, but also how he feels about love and his own situation. Beautiful, brave and innovative, this movie also has some of the most passionate, yet restrained and overall fascinating love scenes that I have seen since Peter Sellers and Shirley Maclaine in 'Being There.'

The Story of a Disillusioned Resistance Member

[Eumenides_0 · 7/10 · 23 April 2010]

Yves Montand plays Diego Mora, a Spanish-born refugee living in France but working for the underground resistance trying to overthrow Franco's fascist regime. He's been in this life for years and is becoming disillusioned with the futility of his actions and the inability of his colleagues to change their modus operandi.

The story starts at the French-Spanish border, Diego is stopped by the authorities. He was meant to meet a contact in Madrid as part of a plan to organise a general strike in Spain. The police let's him go but he feels something's wrong and his suspicions are confirmed when his friends start being arrested. So he returns to reorganise himself, meet the leaders of the resistance, and spend some time with his love, Marianne (played by Ingrid Thulin).

It may sound disappointing to say that not much more happens in the course of the movie, but this movie is not a traditional political thriller. A viewer expecting suspense and tension will certainly find better options. The War Is Over is in fact a character study and an illustration of how futile and unpleasant fighting for one's convictions can be.

Through the life of Diego Mora, we discover a world of freedom fighters that cinema seldom portrays: it's boring, it requires patience, it hardly achieves anything, and it's bogged down in rhetoric and theory instead of inspiring action, and no one is thanked for their personal and emotional sacrifices. This is the life of ordinary people who've given up their personal lives to fight for something they believe is worthy but who live forever in the uncertainty: is it all worth it? There are some scenes that stand out for its contrast of ideas: for instance, when Diego meets the leaders of the resistance, he suggests cancelling the general strike. His views are criticised for being too blinded by reality. It seems that Diego, spending too much time in Spain, can't see the big picture anymore, as opposed to the bourgeois-living leaders in Paris with their ideas and quotes from Lenin and other Marxist theorists. If you can't appreciate the black humor of this situation, this movie won't do anything for you.

In another scene Diego meets, through a teenager who admires him, several young men who are planning to use explosives to fight Franco. It seems they're more in tune with his line of thinking, preferring action over theory. But Diego can't see eye to eye with them either. Exactly what does Diego want? That's the great existential mystery of the movie.

I watched this movie because Jorge Semprún wrote it. Most viewers will come to it via Alain Resnais' name, but this director has never done much for me. So I have little to say about the editing or the cinematography. For me the quality of this movie is focused mostly on the screenplay and the acting.

Jorge Semprún was perhaps more interested in politics than Resnais, as we can see by the movies he wrote later: Z, Special Section, The Confession. In these movies I admired his subdued approach to political thrillers. Rather than glamorising, making things exciting, he preferred to dismantle things and analyse them, get to the core of them. That is precisely what he does in The War Is Over, in showing perhaps the most realistic portrait of life in an underground resistance in cinema ever.

The war ends when life ends....

[jdamico5 · 8/10 · 16 October 2005]

I was less interested in the political drama, than in the subtlety of the acting and the psychological realities of the film. I saw the main character, Diego, in a quest for identity, attempting to make an impact in this world, and constructing much of his life in his imagination as a part of his strategy to stay alive. When asked if he was tired of lying (about his work as a revolutionary and his identity) he responds that he is not lying but constructing "barricades" (to insure his safety).

His quest to conceal his identity and stay alive can be seen as a parallel to the multiplicity of personae that we assume in this life, thinking that this is the only way that we might survive our life's experiences and prevent loss. It is a universal illusion that we can control our destiny and avoid the loss of love, admiration, meaning and purpose.

As counterpoint, what the other characters thought so important and so real...the overthrow of Franco, the police preventing the revolutionaries from accomplishing that task, having a child with Marianne, making love (personal and impersonal)...becomes meaningless to him.

Diego (if even that is his "real" name) cannot live a "normal" life in Spain, but he cannot live anywhere else. He is a Spaniard and can be only that. He "solves" his dilemma: he becomes tired enough to move towards his capture and death. A poignant, painful, resonant narrative of a life.

An internal thriller, fascinating as much as the three lead performances by Montand, Thulin, and Bujold

[ruby_fff · 9/10 · 8 October 2005]

"La Guerre est Finie" aka The War is Over (1966) from French master Alain Resnais, is a taut intellectual yet very much visual thriller. Yves Montand is in his mature prime, and Ingrid Thulin so quietly sensual, while Geneviève Bujold gave an impressive debut performance. Resnais' creative cinematic approach in rich visual play mixed with voice-over narration, aptly intensified the suspense. We're literally inside Montand's character Diego's head - thinking with him, seeing through his eyes, having memory tracking along with him in either flash back or flash forward. We feel Thulin's subtle moves as Marianne - a slight turn of her head, gentle extension of her neck, every movement so delicately modest yet sensual in volumes. Bujold's Nadine has such delicious youthful verve befitting the character - she is the exciting accent. Thulin and Bujold each has an intimate segment opposite Montand delivered in Resnais' unique and refreshing points of view. It is cinematic nuance truly savory and appreciation optimal.

Cinematography in black and white by Sacha Vierny is poignantly appropriate - suspense would probably be lessen if delivered in color. Music score by Giovanni Fusco further ensured the distinctive quality of this film. You can tell this is no Hollywood thriller formula. In fact, the film can very well be a character study of Diego or a visual journey through the interplay of character relationships, yet it's suspenseful nonetheless. The beginning segment with veteran actor Michel Piccoli as the shrewd custom inspector questioning Montand's Diego certainly is tense as any other spy thriller yarn.

The war in the title can very well be within Diego: to decide whether to continue this life of 'professional revolutionary' or to start anew a 'normal' life with Marianne. The dilemma also carries over to Marianne: to decide to stay in Paris or love conquers all in pursuit after Diego (to the point of being a matter of life and death, indeed). "The War is Over" may seem complex, but it's actually an easier to follow film than other Resnais endeavors. Give it a try. It's available on DVD. Caution: do ignore the dubbed in English alternative - it would not be the real thing, definitely non-flavorful. Experience the film in French with English subtitles.

stunning psychodrama

[hhs-3 · 10/10 · 3 December 2002]

CAUTION: NOTES ON PLOT INCLUDED

Well, if you think this movie is about hot sex and Franco, then you could stick to Hemingway. A stunning psychodrama about a man who has seen his life burned out after decades of fighting a "good" but hopeless war, recognizes the futility, and sees another generation committing itself to figurative and literal suicide. Does he stop them? Join them? Can he have any effect at all? Does he try? See the movie. If you're into political drama a la Frankenheimer, Zinnemann, or Costa Gavras, this one is a "ten."

But you're right about Genevieve Bujold. Are you ever 8-)

The Fragility of Coming and Going

[tedg · 21 September 2002]

Spoilers herein.

So many European films from this era have faded. They were about notions disguised as ideas that on reflection were less precious than we thought. But this film has grown in my experience. It somehow touches an important place deftly: perhaps the adhesive is wonder about the value of previously clear passions.

At any rate, here we have misters `Marienbad' (Resnais and Vierny) exploiting the very territory they outlined in that film: but rather than reality being constructed by memory, here it is constructed in a more realistic way -- by coming and going, by rendezvous, by assignment, by getting there.

If someone described what was attempted here in words, and I did not know the film, I would think it impossible. Angst of later life, the increasing emptiness of the motion, the growing concern that the motion itself is fragile, the indication of that by some chance encounters (some sexual, some mistaken), the logic behind the motion is disintegrating.

But it does work. This film finds just the right emotional groove, mostly visual. Much more successfully than, say Antonioni. Part of the art is subtle annotation of what it is: Marianne is putting together a book of images of place (`I can't describe it in words'). There's a writer. There's lots of motion about swapped ID photos and all that entails. Many doors. A fair amount of time and memory folding.

A life with film is a constant process of evaluating who you are, what you cast off and what you accept and incubate within. This may not turn out be a lasting friend to every viewer, but it has for this one.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 4: Worth watching.

A man's gotta do...

[bob998 · 7/10 · 20 March 2004]

Alain Resnais was almost a god of cinema in the 60's. That people actually discussed the meaning of Last Year at Marienbad at parties seems unbelievable today (yet check the posts for Mulholland Drive), but it was a cultural object just as real as a Picasso painting. If I say that La Guerre est finie has aged badly, that's not to say that it didn't hold the attention of liberals 40 years ago.

The politics of the main (male) characters are fossilized. The old Bolshevik ideals have become more and more detached from reality. Diego knows that there will be no general strike in Spain on May 1st, no matter how hard they will it to happen. Pamphlets smuggled by car into the country in false compartments are not being translated into actions. Diego's lack of authenticity is his real problem: he's spent most of his life in France, speaks better French than Spanish, and is watching people 20 years younger than himself taking more radical steps to end Franco's rule.

Marianne has a greater grasp of reality than her lover. After nine years with Diego, she just wants to settle down and have kids, and put an end to the endless coded conversations with her friends (who are ignorant of Diego's revolutionary activities). She watches as Diego gets sloppy--driving with lights out while there's a suitcase full of plastic explosives in the car, as a cop stops them for questioning.

Semprun's script makes Montand into a sexual magnet; has any 20-year-old girl taken off her clothes faster for a tired 45-year-old man? The star system dictates that the male lead be a stud, but there are limits.

Past and Presence

[ilpohirvonen · 9/10 · 27 January 2011]

Alain Resnais was part of the so-called Left Bank of the French New Wave, alongside with Varda, Marker and Demy, who were politically much more aware compared to the film fanatics of Cahiers du Cinema (Rohmer, Truffaut, Rivette, Godard, Chabrol). Alain Resnais has always been interested in past but here he focuses on its impact with regards to the future. The War Is Over was his fourth feature, following Hiroshima mon amour, Last Year in Marienbad and Muriel, and still remains as one of the finest films of political cinema. The film builds around the theme of how to come to terms with one's past in order to live in peace with the present. No other place -- maybe Germany or Poland -- offers such a great setting for this but Spain because the shadows of the Civil War are so present. It is a milieu that has become the symbol of the war, so to speak.

Diego Mora (Yves Montad) is an old man who spent his youth as a revolutionary in the Spanish Civil War. Now, thirty years later, he's part of a group that wants to redeem the dreams of the revolution in Paris. All the members of the group are living in the past, and so is Diego. But soon he has a moment of realization and breaks himself away from the chains of illusion and decides to make a change. Thus, The War Is Over is really a story about a man who is living a lie. It tells, rather bleakly in a melancholy tone, about old communists who can't let go off the past.

The War Is Over might just be Resnais' most satisfying work when it comes to somewhat coherent viewing experience. It's his first film with a clear storyline which is relatively easy to follow even if the editing was deliberately (but not self-deliberate!) ambiguous and confusing. Resnais has succeeded perfectly to relay the flow of time. Moreover, through the character played by Yves Montand the viewer can understand the director's thoughts and emotions, no matter how shattered, because he holds the pieces together. It is he through whom the viewer constructs the big picture.

In The War Is Over memories are created for the future. Alain Resnais doesn't try to build the horrors of the past by newsreel footage. He relays the tragedy of the conditions by showing how people are still living in the past, how they are left with unredeemed dreams in their hands. The dream has died in Spain. Of course, Spain is still there but merely as a concrete place full of tourists. People don't understand each other. There is a major breakdown in the communication between the old and the new left. Both are dreaming of a revolution but in their own ways. The legacy of the past torments the protagonist. However, he is not only forced to recall the past endlessly but also to be unable to understand the present reality.

A lot duller than I would have expected.

[planktonrules · 6/10 · 4 November 2013]

Many folks who watch this film today might be a bit confused about the context, so I'll try to explain. When the Spanish Republican army was defeated by Francisco Franco's troops at the end of the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s, many Republicans (many of whom were communists and socialists) were jailed or killed--and many more poured over the border into exile in countries like France.

The character Yves Montand plays in this film, Diego Mora, is one of these communist exiles--one who regularly sneaks back and forth between the countries on missions for his cause. Exactly what he does on these missions is never talked about very much in these films but he and his comrades are trying to keep alive a small dissident group within Spain. However, during one of these many trips, he is taken in for questioning at the border. Somehow the police have become suspicious but with the help of a young French lady (Genevieve Bujold) he's able to extricate himself from custody. But, others in the organization weren't so lucky and were arrested. Because of this, Mora plans on returning to Spain to try to alert others in his cell so they can escape. However, instead of doing this, he spends so much of the film doing nothing in particular. In fact, that is a HUGE problem with the film. He learns about the possible leak in his organization and the arrests early on in the film and yet doesn't return to help the other agents until about 90 minutes later. In the interim, he meets with several women he cares about or wishes to have sex* with before his return to Spain. In addition, he talks and talks and talks--too much to keep the film interesting or well-paced. Overall, an interesting and well acted curio--especially since Montand himself was a communist and much of the story seems ironic in light of his own background as an Italian expatriate. But not a particularly enjoyable curio.

*Oddly, the first sex scene in the film was one of the most unintentionally funny I have ever seen. Instead of showing any real skin, the camera kept showing everything BUT--and with all sorts of artsy angles and composition. It made me laugh and seemed bizarre in light of the very ordinary and non-prudish sex scene later in the film. Why they did this, I have no idea. Perhaps the first nude scene (with Bujold) was done this way because she was uncomfortable with nudity and I'd sure love to know why they handled it in such a silly manner.

Still alive with feeling

[palmiro · 8/10 · 25 July 2003]

This film has aged rather well considering that it's nearly 40 years old, that the concrete political situation(the Franco dictatorship in Spain)it was enmeshed in has disappeared, and that the musical score, the very mannered montage, and the sex scenes are all hopelessly dated and stilted. What gives this film its vitality is the screenplay written by Jorge Semprun, and it resonates today as well as it did in the mid-60s. Semprun had just written his classic, "The Long Voyage", in 1963, and the crisp trenchancy of his narrative style is just as evident in this film as it was in that story of his 1944 voyage to Buchenwald as a captured fighter of the French Resistance. Though we may not feel any longer the need to reassess the strategy of how to overthrow Franco, we still know what it's like to feel you're at the end of the rope with no place to leap to (both politically and psychologically). What Semprun reminds us, both in this film and in "The Long Voyage," is that it's the opportunities to experience solidarity with and support for others over the course of the journey that matters in the end.

The Frozen War

[boblipton · 7/10 · 19 November 2023]

Yves Montand is a Spaniard in exile in Paris, a Communist working for the central committee in exile in Paris, trying to jump-start the Revolution. He's very professional about what he does. But the Spanish government has arrested agents and he realizes he's grown tired of the never-ending struggle, the insistence of the committee in Paris that their view from a distance gives them better insight than the people who are stationed in Spain. His lover, Ingrid Thulin wants his child, and he indulges in.a tired rant in front of her friends./coworkers tat everything moves and nothing changes.

Montand gives a fine performance as a man growing tired of the always hopeful attitude of the revolutionaries, their insistance on working out the details of life, anxious to snatch small bits of autonomy wherever he can He has grown tired of being a good soldier who sees no end to the war. Will he remain a good soldier? Can he? And what if he cannot?

Alain Resnais movie is far more straightforward than his other works, although he does make liberal use of flashbacks and interpolative stills. With Geneviève Bujold, Jean Dasté, and Michel Piccoli.

Dry as toast

[gbill-74877 · 6/10 · 8 December 2023]

"Patience and irony are the chief virtues of a Bolshevik."

Beautifully shot, with splashes of visual flair, like the fast edits or the scenes with the exquisite shimmering of light on the ceiling, an echo of the haze of looking back on a life of an underground struggle against fascism in Spain following the Civil War. The film highlights the need for perseverance, brotherhood, and sacrifice over the long haul to achieve regime change, as well as the melancholy that comes from perceiving that at some point one's own personal "war" may be over, but the movement will continue on in younger hands.

I loved the idea of it, but unfortunately, the story is about as dry as toast, and it takes far too long to get to the most interesting bit, which was the old guard revolutionary (Yves Montand) confronted with newer radicals who disagree with him on tactics. I wish that part had been more developed. There is just too much time spent on mundane aspects beforehand, the details for which were rather muddled, to sustain a two hour film. Even the presence of Geneviève Bujold and Ingrid Thulin couldn't save it from being a dull affair, and how Resnais shot the love scene between Bujold and Montand in such a (nearly comical) artsy way didn't help matters. As an exercise in filmmaking and with these stars, it holds some level of interest, but it's hard to see how anyone could get excited over it. Seeing it once was enough.

Just awful

[rjmco · 1/10 · 27 September 2004]

I am thrilled that a DVD version of this nightmare has been released. After 36 long years I am able to show my friends what I have so often argued is the most horrible example of film making in all human history. I recently viewed it for the second time, the first being in 1966. Perhaps I was too young then to appreciate the subtleties or nuances of the film, its textures and complexities. Gimme a break, this thing plays worse now than it did then.

The reason I firmly believe that this is the worst flick I've ever seen is that it actually takes itself seriously: It has a respected director (Resnais), stars the greatest French actor ever (Montand), and introduces the beautiful and talented Genevieve Bujold (oh those eyes). Throw in Ingrid Thulin (Bergman freaks know this talented woman) and the movie shouldn't miss. It does, it is just bad.

There's a story in there somewhere wrapped around a few steamy (for the times) sex scenes and a delightful bit of on-camera puking (always fun). Mostly the movie tries to insult your sensibilities while engaging in a pointless and confusing character study of a frustrated middle-aged anti-Franco Marxist. The problem is the guy is shallow, there is no character to study. The rest of the people are very '60s Euro-lefties, very chic, and very uninteresting to all but themselves (and Resnais) in 1966 - I can't begin to imagine how boring they must be to modern audiences. If you want to be entertained while battling against old right-wing Spanish dictators grab yourself some Hemingway. Now there's a guy who could study character.

When we left that theater in 1966 my date turned to me laughingly and said that if I lived a good life God would never make me see a movie that bad again. Apparently I've lived a good life.

Listen, I've sat through Ed Wood productions and Anne-Margaret's "Kitten With a Whip" but "La Guerre Est Finie" remains the worst flick I've ever seen.

Great acting , but quite meaningless story

[Termi21 · 5/10 · 27 November 1998]

While i was watching this movie i was feeling that it would get very interesting.But as the minutes were passing i felt more and more sleepy, nothing interesting was happenning, till the sudden end came....lucky me. Maybe that film is going to be nice for Spanish people...who knows.....

Comment of Deleuze

[aylngnc · 2 September 2021]

Deleuze indicates that Resnais is one of the greatest political film-makers in the West, in modern cinema. According to him, this greatness comes from that they know how to show how people are what is missing, what is not there instead of presence of the people. Also, this film is related to a Spain that will not be seen: do the people in the old central committee stand with the young tereosits or the tired militant?