The War is Over (La guerre est finie) by Alain Resnais: journey into disillusionment

Picture of the movie La guerre est finie (The war is over) © 1965 Gaumont / Europa Film

 

Alain Resnais’ fifth feature film, The War is Over (La guerre est finie) was withdrawn from the Cannes Competition in 1966 at the request of the Spanish Ministry of the Interior. It now returns to the Festival in its restored 4K version, presented as part of Cannes Classics by Gaumont with the support of the CNC.

"The war is over". So concludes the document in which Franco declares the end of the Spanish Civil War on April 1, 1939. It is also the title of a 1966 film by Alain Resnais presented this year in a restored version as part of Cannes Classics. The film follows Diego, played by Yves Montand, a Spanish Communist Party activist who lives between Paris, where he regularly goes into exile, and Madrid, where he tries to maintain the link between the exiles and those who have stayed behind.

 

With a screenplay inspired by his personal story as an underground member of the Spanish Communist Party in exile in France, Jorge Semprún chalks up the first collaboration between the two artists and paints the portrait of a man riven by internal conflict. Between two countries, between two women, between his political convictions and a pre-Sixties activism in which he no longer recognises himself, between the multiple identities he assumes to cross the border.

 

With The War is Over (La guerre est finie), Resnais offers not so much a political film as a film about the militancy and the doubt that accompanies it, a discourse that was subtly overlooked during the film's polemical reception in 1966. In this film, Resnais captures with his familiar genius the fleeting thought processes of a man in the grip of an existential awareness.

 

By offering a 4K restoration of this meandering epic, Gaumont brings back to light a little-known film by one of France's greatest filmmakers and with it, a reflection on the complexity of collective political struggle.

 

The War is Over (La guerre est finie), Alain Resnais, 1966
First digital restoration in 4K presented by Gaumont with the support of the CNC.