A film based on a true story, however, is already quite distant from us in time, but touching no less than if it happened now. This is the film by Yves Boisse “Pants” / Le pantalon, 1997, based on the book by Alain Skoff. The action takes place during the First World War, in 1915. The son of the village blacksmith Lucien Berceau (Vadek
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A film based on a true story, however, is already quite distant from us in time, but touching no less than if it happened now. This is the film by Yves Boisse “Pants” / Le pantalon, 1997, based on the book by Alain Skoff. The action takes place during the First World War, in 1915. The son of the village blacksmith Lucien Berceau (Vadek Stanczak) is called into the army and sent to the front line, he fights as bravely as possible under the completely delusional orders of staff generals and colonels who send and send soldiers to certain death. But at the very beginning he was unlucky when he was issued uniforms, uniform pants of his size was not and he was given white sailing pants. No one paid much attention to this until their regiment and company were replaced by commanders, instead of the deceased colonel came a certain Colonel Ohru (B.-P. Donnadier) and he appointed Lieutenant Andre (J.-P. Komar) as the commander of the company, the first tried to get even higher, and the second was just a notorious bastard, which he proved from the first minutes of his tenure as commander. Seeing Bersault in the "wrong" pants, ordered them to be replaced immediately, when then Bersault brought torn and bloody pants removed from the corpse, and he refuses to accept them, the lieutenant immediately arrests him, moreover, then arrests two soldiers from his platoon, who came to protect him. The colonel immediately decides to turn around and, ignoring both common sense and simply laws, organizes a military tribunal at which Bersault is sentenced to death for disobedience to the order, and his defenders to hard labor, and the sentence is going to be carried out the next morning. Second Lieutenant Guerin (F. Voltaire), who acted as their defender at the tribunal, tries to help, goes to the general at night, he manages to get a reprieve, but on the way back he dies under fire. The sentence is carried out, it was one of the so-called demonstration shootings to educate other soldiers not to think not to follow orders, however idiotic they may be. Naturally, after the end of the war in 1922, Berso was rehabilitated and the sentence was canceled, his name was even put on a monument to the dead in his native village, but none of those who committed it were punished. Colonel Oru rose to general, became chief of the office of Minister of War Maginot, and then commander of the Legion of Honor. Despite the fact that it seems all this was a long time ago, that all this happened in the army, it is simply unbearable to look at such behavior of people vested with power, yet people are exceptionally base and absolutely immoral creatures. And Yves Boisse, whom I remember from the great film “Price of Risk”, once again showed it very precisely, it is a pity that the film is little known. Boisse encountered great difficulties during the filming of this film, he was not allowed to shoot it in France, had to shoot in Belgium, filmmakers renting out antique weapons were forbidden to give him weapons for filming, the army put up all sorts of obstacles to him in everything, but there were still people who informally advised him, because he sought to observe historical accuracy, which without such consultations he would not have been able to. The film makes a very strong impression.
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