In 1914, World War I, the bloodiest war ever at that time in human history, was well under way. However on Christmas Eve, numerous sections of the Western Front called an informal, and unauthorized, truce where the various front-line soldiers of the conflict peacefully met each other in No Man's Land to share a precious pause in the carnage with a fleeting brotherhood. This film dramatizes one such section as the French, Scottish and German sides partake in the unique event, even though they are aware that their superiors will not tolerate its occurrence. Written by Kenneth Chisholm (kchishol@rogers.com)
[Written by Kenneth Chisholm; from IMDb - The Internet Movie Database]

---

On the Christmas Eve of 1914, in the Western Front in France in World War I, the Scottish, the German and the French troops have a moment of truce and share moments of peace and friendship. When the soprano Anna Sorensen succeeds in convincing the Prussian Prince to join her tenor husband Nikolaus Sprink to sing for the German high command, Sprink brings her to the front to sing for his comrades in the trench. The Scottish Lieutenant Gordon and the French Lieutenant Audebert have an informal and unauthorized meeting with the German Lieutenant Horstmayer and negotiate a truce for that night, and the priest Palmer celebrates a mass for the soldiers. When their superiors become aware of the event, they have to pay for the consequence of their acts.

[Written by Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; from IMDb - The Internet Movie Database]

Despite the director's heavy-handed attempts to hammer home an important message, this remains an engaging and remarkable story with likeable, well-written characters.

The Background

Merry Christmas (or Joyeux Noël, original title fans) is written and directed by French director Christian Carion. It's based on the true stories of the truce that occurred between the opposing sides in the trenches of the World War I battlefield on Christmas Eve, 1914.

The Story

The film is set in December 1914, where the French and the Scots are fighting the pesky Germans in the trenches. Morale is low on both sides as the soldiers realise that it probably won't all be over by Christmas after all. On Christmas Eve the sound of bagpipes prompts a German opera-singing soldier (Bruno Fürmann) to start singing carols, whereupon the Scots join in on the bagpipes and everyone applauds.

It isn't long before the three leaders are meeting on the battlefield and declaring a cease-fire for Christmas. The cease-fire includes football games, drinking, present-swapping, a mass Mass (led by Gary Lewis) and the burial of the dead. But after all the camaraderie, will the soldiers still be able to shoot each other afterwards?

The Good

The film is extremely well cast - it's a treat to see familiar British, German and French actors on screen together and it adds considerably to the film's authenticity. Canet in particular gives an extremely likeable performance - his scenes with Bruhl and Ferns are genuinely moving.

However, the casting of Diane Kruger (as Fürmann's opera-singing girlfriend who somehow shows up in the trenches) seems like little more than an excuse for a sex scene and a spot of nudity.

The Bad

The message is clear enough - Carion might just as well have called the film Why Can't We All Just Get Along?. However, Carion insists on spelling it out over and over again, just in case anyone missed it. He also can't resist diving into sentimentality and equally heavy-handed irony which threatens to overbalance the entire film.

The Conclusion

That said, this is an undeniably fascinating story and the characters are engaging and likeable enough to carry the film through its dodgier moments. Worth seeing.

Three out of Five stars

[Review by Matthew Turner (14/12/2005) from The ViewLondon Review]

---

The astonishing war story that a nation chose to forget

A new film offers a panoramic portrait of the Christmas Day truce, finds Sheila Johnston

Christian Carion grew up in Northern France, "surrounded," he says, "by the permanent memory of the First World War". Yet, for all France's war cemeteries and monuments to the fallen, one event has been repressed and forgotten there: the exceptional acts of friendship that erupted all along the Western Front at Christmas, 1914, when British, French and German soldiers put aside their arms to exchange gifts, sing, celebrate Mass, play football and bury their dead.

Carion, now 42, was in his late twenties when he first heard about this and it came to him as a revelation. Ever since, he has been obsessed with making a film "paying homage to these men who taught us a lesson in humanity".

That film, Joyeux Noël ("Merry Christmas"), a panoramic portrait of soldiers from three countries who participated in one of these occasions, set box-office records in France last month for a subtitled film (it is shot in French, German and English) and is the country's entry for the Academy Awards.

Somewhat astonishingly in view of its themes of pacifism and resistance to authority, there are also plans to screen it at British military bases in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan at Christmas.

"In Britain, children learn about the Christmas Day truce in school," Carion says. "That's not the case at all in France, where, officially, only the British and Germans were involved, and the story was terribly censored."

The Daily Telegraph published a piece on December 27, 1914, about German and British troops joining in song after exchanging gifts of chocolate cake and cigarettes. "Your press was much freer than the French and German ones. I'm sure that, even if information had reached, say, Le Figaro, it would have remained a well-kept secret," says Carion.

A disclaimer at the end of Joyeux Noël insists that its characters are fictional. But Carion says that the detail is historically accurate.

Some viewers might find a certain sentimental excess in the scene in which a Scottish bagpiper spontaneously joins in when German soldiers began singing Stille Nacht (Silent Night). There are records of such an event. "All the acts of fraternisation had one thing in common: music and song," says Carion. "I loved the idea that these could stop a war for a few hours."

The film also features a foraging ginger cat adopted as a mascot by both the French and the Germans. The cat existed, and, in real life, it was arrested by the French, convicted of espionage and shot in accordance with military regulations. "It was an era of madmen," says Carion, who filmed this scene - to the great distress of his extras - but decided not to include it in case his audience didn't believe it.

A Scottish bishop's sermon, which includes references to a "crusade" and a "holy war", seems like a thumpingly obvious effort to find parallels with more recent discourses about Iraq. In fact, these words were, Carion says, taken directly from a sermon preached by an Anglican bishop at Westminster Abbey. Here, too, the truth was toned down: Carion excised the real bishop's references to German soldiers "crucifying babies on Christmas Day" in order to make it credible.

Predictably, Joyeux Noël received little support from the military while it was being made. "One training ground was suitable for shooting and we weren't given permission. Officially, it was for reasons of security." Shooting was interrupted for several months until the production could be moved to Romania. By contrast, another film which opened in France last month, Les Chevaliers du Ciel, an action movie described as a French Top Gun, enjoyed the full co-operation of the French air force.

The recent French revival of interest in the First World War, most recently seen in A Very Long Engagement, seems to reflect the country's climate in the wake of the war in Iraq. Interviewed in Le Monde, the historian Jean-Jacques Becker suggests it reveals "more about today than about the war itself. It reflects our vision of its absurdity".

Carion is now lobbying, along with fellow director Bertrand Tavernier, who has himself made several films about the First World War, to have a monument erected to these unknown soldiers who fraternised; none such currently exists.

"Many families have these memories in their drawers, and there's still an emotional bond with these people who are gradually passing away - you've just lost your last surviving British soldier who fraternised," Carion says, referring to Alfred Anderson, who died last month. (There are five known survivors in France, but they are, the director says, too frail to see the film.)

"People are beginning to understand that this was perhaps the most important war of the 21st century and that the modern world today is explained by it."

[Review By Sheila Johnston (2 Dec 2005), from The Telegraph]

• Official Joyeux Noël website.
• Yahoo! Movies (UK & Ireland)