Le vieux fusil

Le vieux fusil

Theatrical release poster
Directed by Robert Enrico
Written by Robert Enrico
Pascal Jardin
Claude Veillot
Starring Philippe Noiret
Romy Schneider
Jean Bouise
Music by François de Roubaix
Cinematography Étienne Becker
Edited by Ava Zora
Eva Zora
Production
company
Les Productions Artistes Associés
Mercure Productions
TIT Filmproduktion GmbH
Distributed by Mercure Productions
Release dates
  • 22 August 1975 (1975-08-22)
Running time
103 minutes
Country France
Language French

Le vieux fusil (English title: The Old Gun aka Vengeance One by One) is a 1975 French film directed by Robert Enrico, and starring Philippe Noiret, Romy Schneider and Jean Bouise. It won the 1976 César Award for Best Film, Best Actor and Best Music, and was nominated for best director, supporting actor, writing, cinematography, editing and sound. The film is based on the Massacre of Oradour-sur-Glane in 1944.

Plot

In Montauban in 1944, during the German retreat from France, Julien Dandieu is an ageing, embittered surgeon in the local hospital. Frightened by the German army entering Montauban, Dandieu asks his friend Francois to drive his wife and his daughter to the remote village where he owns a chateau. One week later, Dandieu sets off to meet them for the weekend, but the Germans have now occupied the village. He finds that all the villagers have been herded into the church and shot. In the château, he finds his daughter shot and his wife immolated by a flame-thrower.

Dandieu decides to kill as many Germans as possible to avenge his family. He takes an old shotgun he used as a child while hunting with his father and starts to kill them one by one. They begin to think they are surrounded by many partisans and do not realise that he is, in fact, the only one, taking advantage of his knowledge of the secret passages within the chateau. He beats one of the SS men to death, shoots some of them and lets two of them drown in the well, where he closes the grid, preventing them from escaping.

With no more cartridges for the shotgun, he finds the flame-thrower which killed his beloved wife and uses it to kill the SS officer as he is about to commit suicide standing in front of the two-way mirror. The film ends with the liberation of the place by the French Resistance.

Cast

See also

External links

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