The Savior (1971) Le sauveur

Director: Michel Mardore
Writer: Michel Mardore (original scenario, adaptation and dialogue)
Stars: Horst Buchholz, Muriel Catalá, Hélène Vallier

This is the Summer of 1943 and the place is rural France. The weather is fine and sunny and life is sweet. On one of these beautiful days, Nanette, a fourteen-year-old peasant girl, meets a slightly injured young man near the farm she lives on. Named Claude, he claims to be an English paratrooper, sent there to organize resistance to the Nazis. Although her parents have taught her to worship Pétain and the Germans and hate the English, Nanette accepts to hide him in the attic. Day after day she brings him food and cares for him. It does not take long before she falls in love with him and discovers the ecstasy of physical love. But after she has helped Claude to come into contact with the local resistance fighters, he disappears.

Nanette is only 14 but already a nubile beauty living on a farm in France during the German occupation. She believes what she is being taught by her family and teachers about the good Germans and the bad English. She supports the Nazis. When a resistance fighter parachutes to the wrong place she finds him and falls in love. She looks spectacular and loves to undress for him and be without clothes but he is much older and will not take her sexually. He agrees to come for her after the war and she pledges her undying love. A beautiful love story right? Sorry, but this is a well-made film about treachery, fear, barbarism and the realities of war. It is erotic and beautiful for the first hour but ugly and sad the rest of the way. Still worth the trip but you have been warned.

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