The War Is Over |The New Yorker

2022-08-20 01:56:17 By : Ms. Alexia Yang

Film Forum’s centenary celebration of the director Alain Resnais culminates in a weeklong run (Aug. 26-Sept. 1) of a new restoration of “La Guerre Est Finie” (“The War Is Over”), from 1966, one of his most overtly confrontational yet self-questioning films. Resnais launched his career with such complex considerations of politics and memory as “Hiroshima Mon Amour” and “Muriel,” yet “La Guerre Est Finie,” his fourth feature—a straightforwardly suspenseful thriller—is no less original or audacious. It’s centered on a long-standing Spanish opponent of the Franco dictatorship, Diego Mora (Yves Montand), who is smuggled into France and makes his way to Paris, where he’s awaited by a secret cell of exiled Spanish resisters, by French sympathizers to their cause, and by a longtime lover (Ingrid Thulin). The tense plot involves the high-risk practicalities of clandestine resistance—the elaborate fictions that sustain false identities, the meticulous planning of subversive action, cat-and-mouse games with the police, intramural left-wing conflicts, and the dangers posed by romance. The drama’s prime motive—staying faithful to the legacy of the Spanish Civil War, whether as history, experience, or myth—is inseparable from the movie’s intellectual explorations.