La guerre est finie

Director: Alain Resnais

1966 / 121min / 4K DCP

A member of a leftist group committed to the downfall of the Franco regime, exiled middle-aged Spanish dissident Yves Montand, first encountered during one of his regular clandestine border crossings en route to his adopted home in Paris, finds himself riven by personal indecision—his affections are torn between longtime mistress Ingrid Thulin and new amour Geneviève Bujold—and nagged by feelings of obsolescence as he mixes with a rising generation of extremists whose do-or-die ardor challenges his own flagging sense of devotion to the cause. One of Resnais’s most emotionally involving films, a quality achieved without sacrifice in the realm of formal experimentation, as La guerre est finie makes repeated, effective use of flash-forwards described by the director as the “future conditional” tense of filmmaking. A penetrating study of a man bent to the point of breaking, and the dogged endurance required to hold onto an ideal.

Distributor: The Film Desk

Part of Fugitive Days