Le Sauveur (1971) - film review

Summer, 1943.  Nanette is a solitary 14-year old girl whose family owns a farm in a remote region of rural France.  One day, she encounters a handsome young man who has suffered a slight injury to his foot.  Named Claude, he reveals that he is an English soldier and appeals to Nanette to shelter him from the Nazis.  Although she has been brought up to hate the English (her family are staunch Pétain supporters), Nanette takes him to her father’s farm and finds him a hiding place in a disused attic.  Whilst he is recovering, Nanette brings him food and keeps him amused. In no time, Nanette realises that she is in love with Claude, but he is insistent that he must find a French resistance group.  Reluctantly, Nanette asks around the village and finds various contacts for Claude.  When he has gone, the love-struck adolescent is bitter and betrays him to the police.  A short while later, the countryside around her is filled with the sound of gunfire and explosions.  She is captured by a Nazi soldiers and taken to their commanding officer.  Standing before her is her beloved Claude, dressed in the uniform of  a senior Nazi officer…

Acclaimed writer Michel Mardore made his directorial début with this crude but chillingly effective portrayal of Faustian corruption of innocence.  The World War II trappings provide a convenient backdrop for a familiar tale, one in which a blameless innocent is ensnared by the Devil in human flesh, and gradually led towards committing a crime of unspeakable horror.   Despite some noticeable imperfections in the script, the direction and the acting, Le Sauveur is a compelling and disturbing work which plays on the spectator’s emotions to great effect.

The story is told predominantly from the perspective of the young Nanette – so we gain a keen appreciation of her feelings as the drama unfolds.  First the ennui before meeting Claude, then the suspicion and excitement that the stranger arouses, then the insane passion that is love, to be followed by spiteful loathing when Claude leaves her, and so on.  This one-person perspective allows the film’s last twenty minutes to have their full dramatic force.  What we see would have been shocking enough, but to have such empathy with Nanette’s feeling of complicity in what happens just adds another dimension of brutal emotional engagement.  Perhaps Mardore’s biggest mistake was to tack on an implausible epilogue which allows Nanette to redeem herself.  A final parting shot of Nanette witnessing the Nazi brutality at its worst, and realising her part in all this, would have had far greater impact than what is actually shown.

The casting of Nanette was a last minute decision.  Isabelle Adjani was considered for the role but at the last moment it was given to Muriel Catalá, her first film part in a surprisingly short career.  More controversial was Mardore’s decision to cast Horst Buchholz in the role of Claude.  Although the devastatingly handsome Buchholz had had a hugely successful career in Germany, he was not favoured by the critics.  Mardore’s judgement paid off, however. In Le Sauveur Horst Buchholz is easily seductive as the English soldier he initially pretends to be, but then horrifyingly evil as the Nazi officer he becomes in the film’s latter half – truly a performance to send a chill down the spine.

The film’s dramatic ending was inspired by a real life event – an horrific act of Nazi purging that took place in the town of Oradour-sur-Glane, in the Haute-Vienne region of France on 10th June 1944.  As they retreated from the advancing allied forces, a regiment of German soldiers took the time to round up and execute the inhabitants of the town – an act of mindless brutality which has not been explained to this day.

© James Travers 2005

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Esta pelicula la vi en el Ano 1972 en la Ciudad de Chillan en Chile, por esos entonces tenia 23 anos, y quede conmovido.  Quizas muestra la realidad en que esta ambientada pero aplicable perfectamente a estos tiempos lo que la hace que siempre este en mi memoria.  La historia es contada principalmente desde la perspectiva de los juvenes Nanette - por lo que obtener un agudo reconocimiento de sus sentimientos como el drama se desarrolla. En primer lugar el aburrimiento antes de la reunion Claude, la sospecha y la emocion que despierta el extranjero, entonces la pasion loca que es el amor, para ser seguido por odio rencoroso.

(Translation: I saw this film in 1972 in the city of Chillan in Chile, when I was 23 years old, and was very moved.  The story is told mainly from the perspective of the young Nanette - so you get a keen appreciation of her feelings as the drama unfolds.  First boredom before her meeting with Claude, then suspicion, then passionate is love, followed by spiteful hatred.)

Juan Alex (Chile) 

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