La Ligne de Démarcation

If you believe his autobiography, Chabrol shot this picture in an alcoholic stupor, partly due to physical discomfort (on location in the mid-winter Jura countryside), but mainly because he felt no affinity with the material, a wartime resistance drama with daring escapes, heroic self-sacrifice and little moral complexity. And yet it seems a well-controlled, perfectly respectable piece, directed for its surface values and not undermined by any knowing winks at the audience (except perhaps in the scenes with leather-coated Gestapo agents Maury and Gégauff). It's a rural counterpart of L'Armée des Ombres, and although that comparison is by no means annihilating, it does point up the low intensity of Chabrol's involvement.