Post-war France at its best and worst - the communists trying to prove their patriotism by catching collaborators, everyone trying to prove their innocence with someone else's guilt, with the inevitable results - some innocents are punished and some guilty remain unpunished but not very happy either. A very theatrical production featuring some of the greatest contemporary French actors: Gérard Depardieu as a touching bar owner who is passionate about alcohol and Racine, in that order, Philippe Noiret as a cynical but happy professor, Michel Blanc as a level-headed but headstrong communist, Michel Galabru as a war profiteer, and Jean-Pierre Marielle as a Petainist with a guilt conscience. As a bonus, a very young Fabrice Luchini plays a communist from a bourgeois background and the baggage that comes with it. All in all, the kind of Cinema of Quality that Truffaut and his fellow new wave directors abhorred, but that thrives in France and is popular the world over. A kind of Merchant-Ivory production in the French tradition.
