La mer à l'aube / Calm at Sea

Several different stories are told. The story of the Communist party attacks on German goals. The story of the collaboration of Pétain, of French gendarmerie and the prefecture. The story of the famous German writer Ernst Jünger in Paris. But for the French, most of all, the story of Guy Moquet, whose letter of good-bye written just before being executed with 26 other hostages now is a compulsory subject in French schools. This film describes in a very vivid way the dilemma of all the characters, where good is not always good, and bad not always bad. Volker Schloendorff never makes a judgment, and he never pronounces a point of view, taken for or against some character. It just tells the story.