Les Grandes Manoeuvres

A garrison town just before the First World War. Armand, rakish lieutenant in the Dragoons (Philipe), undertakes to seduce any woman - say, whoever wins tonight's raffle - by the time the regiment goes on summer manoeuvres. A decorous but unfoolable divorcée (Morgan) turns out to be the object of the wager and of course Armand falls genuinely in love: the rake's comeuppance. But Clair is the victim of his own nature just as much as the hapless Armand. His preferred 'voice' - the lightly ironical - and the distance he insists on maintaining between characters and audience ensure that the story seems only half-expressed, merely an agreeably rendered anecdote. Hard to resist imagining what Max Ophuls might have made of it.