With Bank Holiday Monday taking place,I decided to watch one of the longer flicks I have laying around waiting to be played. Having enjoyed seeing members of the cast in a number of movies, I got set to witness their war-time weekend.

View on the film:

Despite having shown in other works that they can give mesmerising performances, Catherine Spaak and Marie Dubois are here pushed to the sidelines with flat roles, which to the credit of them both, are given a nervousness that does not come across in the script. Performing his own stunts, Jean-Paul Belmondo gives a fittingly rugged performance as Maillat, whose swagger gets cut down by Belmondo when the bombs land.

Filmed on the Bray-Dunes beaches where some Dunkirk evacuations actually took place, director Henri Verneuil & cinematographer Henri Decae charge in with a "Teatime Movie" atmosphere of rattling wide crane shots sweeping along the explosive battlefield. Attempting to turn the mood serious near the end with an attempted rape, Verneuil never fully frees the flick from the Boys Own Adventure setting, (complete with British generals sipping tea) via scenes such as the attempted rape being swiftly moved on for more grand-standing action. Firmly established as a family friend,come on chaps wartime adventure, Francois Boyer adaptation of Robert Merle's sits utterly at odds with the tone, being most bluntly felt in the swearing dialogue coming across utterly miss-matched to the Teatime spent on a weekend a Dunkirk.

The French title is, of course, richly ironic, as the movie describes the very specific evil which arises when a man-made catastrophe hits an area (in this case, a smiling beach and an hospitable town) made for summer picnics and lazy walks. Moreover, the movie makes the point (and how) that two days last an eternity for people surrounded by nerve-wracking danger.

Serpent-like, the movie moves easily and fluidly from humor to sadness, from profundity to absurdity, from banality to despair and from bitterness to resolve. The war atmosphere is convincing and realistic and there are some fine performances. Belmondo, who is both the hero and anti-hero, gives a performance of rare humanity and maturity ; in my humble opinion, this is one of his best roles.

This does not mean that "Weekend" is free of tonal missteps. I have always been amazed by the weird "love affair" tacked unto the story ; it may have been meant as a ray of sunshine or a beacon of hope but if so the effect misfires badly. This is pretty much the passive / aggressive relationship from hell, born in darkness and quite as scary as any of the military mayhem flattening the town.

There looms a chasm between "Weekend" and the very recent "Dunkirk" : both movies are radically different in structure, scope, tone and ambition. It's remarkable how the human imagination can shed such different lights on identical (or at least vastly similar) events.

There are only three films to my knowledge that attempt to tell the story of this pivotal event of World War Two. A segment in the very bleak "Atonement", the 1950S Black and White British movie "Dunkirk" and this 1964 french movie.

Several years ago I caught about fifteen minutes of this Belmondo film on a cable channel while I was travelling on business. I made it a point to track it down and get a copy on DVD, only to find that the copy I ordered online was an awful English dub.

Despite this, I find this movie riveting. As the simple story progresses, Belmondo's character tries to find his way off the beach at Dunkirk and over to England. Director Verneuil keeps the focus on Belmondo's Picaresque adventures, so we have someone to root for.

There is a refreshing naiveté to Belmondo's Julien Maillat when compared to some of his later hard boiled characters. He drifts from one twisted adventure to another and as he sees a lot of death and destruction one senses an emotional cocoon forming around him layer by layer. The varied people he meets and their stories are vivid and touching.

The "sets", a small coastal town, a ship and the beaches, are appropriately open and huge. The number of extras needed to fill the canvas is stunning and the "battle" scenes are as spectacular as any of those from war movies of this period (excpting The Longest Day).

This isn't a deep psychological character study or anything. Julien simply does what most people would do in his situation. He lends a hand here or there or hangs out and philosophizes with his buddies, one of which is a catholic army chaplain slash priest. This of course opens up a discussion of what God is doing about all this.

Julien strikes up a relationship with a girl from the town which takes a strange and sinister turn towards the end.

I didn't love the story's resolution. I haven't read the book and do not know If the film follows it faithfully. It just struck me as unsatisfying.

But despite this the rest of the movie was well worth seeking out. If you can, see it in french with subtitles rather than in its dubbed version.