The War Is Over

Diego (Yves Montand), an ageing cadre of the Spanish Communist Party, travels under false names between Paris and Franco’s Spain. After arrests in Madrid, he is sent to warn his comrades and is beset by doubts. He doubts the party leadership, which dreams of a general strike, the young radicals who believe in bombs, and his own life between his partner Marianne (Ingrid Thulin) and the student Nadine (Geneviève Bujold). After the formal experiments of “Hiroshima mon amour” and “Last Year at Marienbad”, Alain Resnais tells this story in a more linear way, yet interspersed flash-forwards reveal Diego’s fears and expectations. The screenplay was written by Jorge Semprún, himself a long-time underground activist of the Spanish Communist Party. Montand embodies the weariness of a revolutionary whose struggle has hardened into ritual. Under pressure from the Franco regime, the film was withdrawn from competition at Cannes. Today it is regarded as a melancholy reflection on commitment and disillusionment on the eve of 1968.