(My rating: 7,5/10)
I will not repeat here the grounds upon which the film is considered very good, if not a masterpiece: many reviewers (in IMDb and elsewhere) and many film critics and historians have made it clear enough. I just wanted to focus on a little curious oversight that slipped into the film, otherwise masterfully conducted.
As we know from the plot (you can find it easily around the web or elsewhere, if you haven't seen the film yet), Marguerite's marriage with Etienne Laurier had been arranged by her parents, and she doesn't love him. She loves Julio Desnoyers and is loved by him; and she leaves her husband. But then the war comes. Etienne is wounded: he is blind. Marguerite feels guilty and wants to atone for having deserted her husband: she resolves to let go Julio and to dedicate to Etienne.
But you cannot lie to yourself, at the end. Being a nurse to Etienne, thinks Marguerite, is not my place, I should be with my beloved Julio. So she resolves to leave (again) Etienne, and writes a letter to him in which she states her motivations.
And that is precisely the glitch: you don't write a letter for someone to read, if that someone is blind!
I will not repeat here the grounds upon which the film is considered very good, if not a masterpiece: many reviewers (in IMDb and elsewhere) and many film critics and historians have made it clear enough. I just wanted to focus on a little curious oversight that slipped into the film, otherwise masterfully conducted.
As we know from the plot (you can find it easily around the web or elsewhere, if you haven't seen the film yet), Marguerite's marriage with Etienne Laurier had been arranged by her parents, and she doesn't love him. She loves Julio Desnoyers and is loved by him; and she leaves her husband. But then the war comes. Etienne is wounded: he is blind. Marguerite feels guilty and wants to atone for having deserted her husband: she resolves to let go Julio and to dedicate to Etienne.
But you cannot lie to yourself, at the end. Being a nurse to Etienne, thinks Marguerite, is not my place, I should be with my beloved Julio. So she resolves to leave (again) Etienne, and writes a letter to him in which she states her motivations.
And that is precisely the glitch: you don't write a letter for someone to read, if that someone is blind!