Marie-Octobre

 Fourteen years after the end of the war, the former members of a Resistance cell gather in a villa, at the invitation of Marie-Octobre (Danielle Darrieux) and the owner of the estate (Paul Meurisse). At their last meeting, just before the Liberation, the Gestapo had stormed the same estate and shot Castille, the leader of the group. He hovers over the gathering like the ghost of a martyr because it is clear that one of the former resistance fighters must have betrayed the others and the meeting to the enemy. The informant is thus in the room. Duvivier presents a claustrophobic and masterful cat-and-mouse game that is told in real-time and in which each of the people present is both cat and mouse. Ever new variations, chasms and possible motives come to light until in the end the culprit reveals themselves, and the question of atonement and punishment inevitably comes to the fore. (re/fl)