Winter 2025
La Guerre est finie
Alain Resnais - New 4K Restoration
La Guerre est finie
France, 1966, 121 mins
Starring Yves Montand, Geneviève Bujold, Ingrid Thulin
Screenplay by Jorge Semprún
Directed by Alain Resnais
Restored by Gaumont, with support of the CNC.
A FILM DESK RELEASE.
LA GUERRE EST FINIE begins three decades after the Spanish Civil War and Franco's fascist military coup, with Communist operative Yves Montand (Best Actor, National Society of Film Critics), juggling multiple identities as he continues his dangerous missions, while reflecting on a life of political struggle. Though increasingly disillusioned, his determination to help a possibly captured comrade and chance encounter with impetuous student terrorist Geneviève Bujold, keep his commitment to the cause alive. Rejected by Cannes so as not to offend Franco’s government, LA GUERRE EST FINIE went on to win France’s prestigious Prix Louis Delluc and the New York Film Critics Circle award for Best Foreign Language Film. Spanish novelist, screenwriter (Costa-Gavras’ Z, Resnais’ STAVISKY), and politician Jorge Semprún, himself an exile living in Spain and clandestine fighter for the Spanish Republic was Oscar-nominated for his autobiographical screenplay.
“A landmark film.”
“If in some ways the most satisfying movie Resnais has made, credit is due largely to the lucidity and integrity of Yves Montand’s Diego, a revolutionary engulfed by fears, fantasies and futilities… Through his mind passes what we know and feel about the heritage of the Old Left, that last, desperate camaraderie commemorated in kitchens and cemeteries as old comrades grapple with the old rhetoric they’re doomed never to forget and the new reality they’re doomed never to understand.”
“A triumph and a thriller. Erotic scenes of such outright beauty, such superb subtlety. An outstanding film from our time.”
“Resnais’ previous films were explorations of the subconscious. With LA GUERRE EST FINIE, he unexpectedly gives us not only psychology but an exciting thriller, done with great artistry.”
“A masterpiece. One of the all-time greats.”
“So far above the other thriller films that comparison would be foolish.”
“How not to be moved to tears by La Guerre est finie? There is a miracle
there I do not try to understand.”
Jorge Semprún, Alain Resnais and Yves Montand.
