"Vercors' famous novel" "The Silence of the Sea" "In memory of the murdered poet, Saint-Pol-Roux" "This film does not claim to provide a solution to the relations between France and Germany, which will remain problematic while the barbaric Nazi crimes carried out with the collusion of the German people stay in our minds" "He had left like that" "He submitted to life like all the others" "Like the whole wretched nation" "And I tried to remember everything that had happened in these six months" "The evenings, his words the rebellion that even this man did not have the courage to continue against his master's orders" "His arrival was preceded by a great deal of military preparation" "Later the gangling soldier came back accompanied by another" "They spoke to me in what they thought was French" "I didn't understand a word" "But I showed them the unoccupied rooms" "They seemed satisfied" "The next morning an army car made its way into the garden" "Two soldiers extricated two boxes" "The car left and a few hours later I heard horses" "Three men on horseback appeared" "They had pushed my workbench clamp between stones in the wall attached a rope to it and the horses to the rope by the barn, my workshop" "Nothing happened for the next two days" "I didn't see anyone" "The men left early with their horses" "They returned with them in the evening, sleeping on the straw they had put down" "Then on the morning of the third day, the army car returned" "A pair of sheets, please" "My niece had just brought me my coffee as she did every evening" "Coffee helps me to sleep" "I was sitting at the end of the room, more or less in the dark" "If you please" "My name is Werner von Ebrennac" "I'm very sorry, I..." "It was necessary, of course." "I would have avoided it, if I'd been able" "My orderly will do everything he can not to disrupt you" "I have a deep respect for people who love their country" "I could go to my room now, but I don't know the way" "My niece opened the door leading onto the stairs and started to climb without looking at the officer as if she was alone" "The officer followed her" "I noticed that he had a limp" "My niece came back down" "Thank God, he seems quite decent" "Next morning the officer came down as we were breakfasting in the kitchen" "A different staircase leads down to it" "I don't know if he'd heard us or if he just happened to come this way" "He said" "I had a very good night" "I hope yours was as good" "Your old mayor said I'd be staying at the Château" "But I'll thank my men for getting it wrong." "It's much more beautiful here" "He returned at the same time as before." "We were having coffee" "He knocked but didn't wait for my niece and opened the door himself" "I fear I'm disturbing you" "If you prefer, I'll come in via the kitchen?" "Then you can lock this door" "I bid you good night" "We never locked the door" "I'm not sure this was for a very clear or blameless reason" "My niece and I had silently agreed not to change our lives at all not even the slightest detail" "As if the officer didn't exist." "As if he were a ghost" "But in my heart there may have been another reason" "It pains me to offend anyone, even if he is my enemy" "For a long time, more than a month, the same scenario was played out" "The officer would knock and enter" "He would say something about the weather, the temperature or some such subject of little importance" "Their common trait - none of them required a response" "He always lingered at the hearth." "He looked around him" "A faint smile betrayed the pleasure he took in this exercise" "Always the same exercise, always the same pleasure" "His eyes rested on my niece's bowed profile which was always severe and impassive" "When he finally took his eyes off her I saw in them a kind of smiling approval" "I bid you good night" "Things suddenly changed one evening" "A light snow was falling, mixed with rain, it would both freeze and drench you" "I put the thickest logs on the fire that had been set aside for such days" "I imagined the officer outside covered in a sprinkling of snow on his return" "But he didn't return" "It was long past his usual time and to my annoyance I found myself thinking about him" "My niece was knitting slowly and with great concentration" "Finally we heard footsteps but they came from inside the house" "From the uneven sound I could tell it was the officer" "He'd come in by the other door and was now leaving his room" "He no doubt hadn't wanted to appear inglorious in his drenched uniform" "He had first changed" "The footsteps, one loud, one quiet, came down the stairs" "The door opened and the officer appeared" "He was in mufti" "Excuse me, I'm not very warm." "I got drenched and my room is very cold" "I'll warm myself by your fire for a moment" "That's good" "This is nothing." "The French winter is mild" "It's hard where I'm from, very hard" "We have fir trees, the forests are tightly packed" "The snow sits heavy on them" "The trees here are delicate the snow covers them like lace" "Germany is like a powerful thickset bull which needs all its strength to stay alive" "Here, it's all intellect, thought, subtle and poetic" "I've always loved France." "Always" "My childhood thoughts in the last war mean nothing" "But I've always loved it since" "But it was from a distance." "Like the "Faraway Princess"" "Because of my father" "Because of my father" "He was very patriotic" "The defeat was very painful for him" "But he loved France" "He liked Briand." "He believed in the Weimar Republic and in Briand" "He was very enthusiastic" "He would say, "He'll unite us like man and wife"" "He thought the sun would finally rise over Europe" "But Briand was defeated" "My father saw that France was still run by your cruel upper classes" "Men like de Wendels, Henri Bordeaux and the old Marshal" "He said to me, never go to France unless it is in a soldier's garb" "I made him that promise because he was dying" "When war broke out, I knew all of Europe, except France" "I'm a musician." "I'm not a performer, I compose music" "It's my whole life" "So it's strange for me to see myself as a fighting man" "But I don't..." "I don't regret this war" "No, I think some great good will come of it" "Forgive me if I have offended you but I sincerely believe what I said" "Out of love for France" "Great things will come of it for both Germany and France" "I think as my father did that the sun will shine again on Europe" "I bid you good night" "Perhaps it's inhumane to refuse to speak to him" "I almost felt myself blush" "From that day on this was the pattern his visits took" "We rarely saw him in his uniform he changed first, then knocked at our door" "Whether to spare us the enemy uniform to make us forget or to get to know the man?" "Both, no doubt" "He knocked and entered, not waiting for the reply he knew we wouldn't give" "He did it in the most natural way and warmed himself" "This was always his excuse, but neither he nor we believed it and he did not try to disguise its conventionality" "He didn't come every single evening but I don't remember one when he did not talk" "He leaned over the fire, and while he warmed himself his deep voice would gently rise and he would talk about the things close to his heart his country, music, France" "It was always a monologue as he never tried to prise from us a response, an agreement or even a look" "He wouldn't speak for long, never longer than on the first evening" "He would say a few sentences, sometimes broken by silence sometimes linked up with the monotonous continuity of a prayer" "He would sometimes stand motionless, a caryatid against the chimney breast or without breaking off, go up to an object or a picture" "Then he would fall silent, bow and bid us goodnight" "Once, in the early days of his visits, he said..." "How is this different from a fire at home?" "The wood, the hearth, the flame are the same, but the light is different" "This one depends on the objects it lights, the people in this room" "Why do I like this room so much?" "It's not so beautiful." "Oh, I'm sorry, I mean..." "It's not a museum piece." "Your furniture, not beautiful artefacts..." "No, but this room has a soul" "The whole house has a soul" "Balzac, Baudelaire, Corneille, Descartes, Fénelon, Gautier, Hugo" "What a line-up!" "And I've only got to 'H'" "Not as far as Molière, Racine, Rabelais." "Pascal, Stendhal, Voltaire, Montaigne and all the others" "With the English, you immediately think of Shakespeare" "With the Italians, Dante" "With Spain, Cervantes and with us, immediately Goethe" "Then you have to stop and think but if someone says France, who immediately springs to mind?" "Molière?" "Racine?" "Hugo?" "Voltaire?" "Rabelais?" "Or who of the others?" "They're like a crowd at a theatre entrance." "You don't know who to let in first" "But in terms of music, you think of us" "Bach, Händel, Beethoven, Wagner, Mozart" "Which name do you put first?" "And we are at war with each other!" "But it is the last." "We won't fight any more, we will marry" "Yes" "It will be the most beautiful wedding in the world" "I bid you good night" "My dear, I'm going back to warm up" "But he never mentioned this meeting" "When we entered Saintes, I was happy that we got a good reception" "I was very happy." "I thought it would be easy" "Then I saw that it was not that at all, it was cowardice" "I felt contempt for them and I feared for France" "I thought, "Has it really come to this?"" "No, I've since seen it's not so and now I'm happy to see its stern expression" "I'm happy to have found here a dignified old man and a silent young lady" "We have to overcome this silence, we have to overcome France's silence" "I'm glad it's so" "Then one evening..." "Yes, it's better like this, much better." "It makes for a better union" "A union in which each side grows in greatness" "There's a lovely fairytale that I've read, that you've read, that everyone has read" "I don't know if the title is the same We call it 'Das Tier und die Schöne'..." "'Beauty and the Beast'" "Poor Beauty." "She is at the mercy of the Beast, his powerless prisoner" "She is subjected to his impassive and heavy presence all day long" "Beauty is proud, dignified, she has become hard" "But the Beast is better than it seems It doesn't have the finest manners" "It is gauche, brutal" "It seems uncouth next to the refined Beauty" "But it has a heart." "Yes, a soul which aspires to greater things" "If Beauty wanted" "Beauty takes a long time to do so" "But gradually she discovers a light in her hated captor's eyes a light where entreaty and love are discernible" "She becomes less aware of its heavy paw, her prison chains" "She stops hating it." "Its constancy touches her and she gives it her hand" "The Beast is immediately transformed" "The spell that had trapped him in this barbaric pelt is broken" "He is a handsome knight with a pure heart, sensitive and cultured and every kiss from Beauty adorns him with ever more glorious qualities" "Their union leads to their sublime happiness" "Their children who combine their parents' talents are the most beautiful on earth" "Don't you like this fairytale?" "I've always loved it" "I'm always reading it" "It used to make me cry" "I especially like the Beast because I understood his suffering" "It still moves me today when I talk about it" "I bid you good night" "One evening when I went up to my room to get some tobacco I heard the strains of the harmonium" "The Eighth Prelude and Fugue my niece had been practising before the disaster" "The score stayed open at that page but until then my niece had not practised again" "I was pleased and surprised she had gone back to it" "What emotional need could have suddenly made her take it up again?" "No, she had not left her chair or her work" "There's nothing greater" "Great is not quite the right word" "Beyond man, beyond his flesh" "It makes us realise... no... guess... no sense what nature is divine nature, divested of the human mind" "Yes, it's inhuman music" "Bach." "He could only be German" "Our land has this inhuman characteristic" "By 'inhuman' I mean it's not on the same scale as men" "I love this music, I admire it It overwhelms me" "It is like God's presence in me" "But it's not my music" "I want to compose music on a human scale" "It's a way of arriving at the truth." "My way" "I don't want another, I can't follow any other" "I know that now." "I know it for sure" "Since when?" "Since I've been here" "Now I need France, but I ask a lot of her." "I ask her to welcome me" "It doesn't mean anything to be here as a foreigner, a traveller, a conqueror" "She doesn't give anything because you can't take anything from her" "Her wealth, her great wealth will not be conquered" "You have to drink her milk" "She has to offer you her milk like a mother" "I know that depends on us but it depends on her, too" "She has to be willing to understand our thirst and to quench it" "She has to be ready to join with us" "I need to live here for a long time, in a house like this" "Like the son of a village, a village like this I need..." "Obstacles have to be overcome" "Sincerity can always overcome obstacles" "I bid you good night" "I don't remember all that was said over a hundred winter evenings" "But it was always the same" "Always his rapture about his discovery of France" "The love he had felt from afar before coming here" "The love which grew each day since he had the good fortune to live here" "And I have to say I admired him" "He never got discouraged, never tried to break our intractable silence by any verbal outbursts" "On the contrary, when he sometimes let the silence take over the room and seep into its corners like a heavy unbreathable gas of the three of us, he seemed to be most at ease" "He looked approvingly at my niece his expression both smiling and solemn as it had been from the first day" "And I felt my niece's soul struggle in her self-imposed prison" "I saw it in the little signs, like the slight trembling of her fingers" "When Werner von Ebrennac finally gently and smoothly broke this silence with his deep voice I felt able to breathe more easily" "I was born in my house in the forest." "I went to the village school" "I didn't leave it until I went to Munich for my exams and to Salzburg for the music" "I've always lived there." "I didn't like the cities" "I've been to London, Vienna, Rome, Warsaw and of course to German cities" "I wouldn't like to live there" "I did like Prague." "It has a soul like no other" "And Nuremberg above all else" "It's the city that fills a German's heart because you find ghosts which are close to your heart every stone imbued with the memory of those who made Germany noble" "I imagine the French must feel the same at Chartres" "They must also feel the presence of their ancestors their graciousness of spirit, the splendour of their faith, their kindness" "Fate took me to Chartres" "Attention!" "350 metres." "Prepare" "Fire!" "It's so." "So many things are going on in a German's head" "Even in the best German, and he'd be glad to be cured of them" "In the country house near us lives a young woman" "She is very beautiful and very sweet" "My father would have been happy if I had married her" "We were practically engaged when he died and we went for long walks on our own" "One day we were in the forest and..." "I'm so happy, Werner" " All God's creations are so wonderful." " Yes, I'm happy too" "Wretched creature!" "It stung me" "Look, I've caught it, Werner" "Now I'm going to punish it" "I'll tear off its legs, one by one" "Fortunately she had a lot of other suitors" "I have no regrets" "But I'm terrified of German girls now" "Our politicians are like that too I never wanted anything to do with them" "Even though my friends wrote saying, "Come and join us"" "No" "I always preferred to stay at home" "It wasn't the best thing for the success of my music, but too bad" "Success counts for little compared to a clear conscience" "I know that my friends and the Führer have the greatest and most noble ideas" "But I also know that they would tear off mosquitoes' legs, one by one" "That always happens to Germans when they are lonely" "It always comes back" "Who is lonelier than the men in the Party when they rule?" "Fortunately they're not alone now." "They are in France" "France will cure them" "And they know it" "They know France will teach them to be truly great and pure-hearted" "But for that, they need love" "A shared love" "I bid you good night" "The long spring days arrived" "The officer now returned with the last of the sun's rays" "The Führer announces far-reaching historic decisions will be made" "One evening he came down, a book closed over his finger" "He wore the suppressed half smile of one who knows he is about to make others happy..." "He said" "I'm sorry to disturb you so early but I have this for you" "It's from 'Macbeth'" "Such greatness" "It's at the end" "Macbeth's power is slipping away and with it the loyalty of those who finally realise the depths of his ambition" "The noblemen who defend Scotland's honour waiting for his imminent downfall" "One of them describes the dramatic symptoms of this downfall" "Angus:" "Now does he feel his secret murders sticking on his hands" "He is upbraided by a revolt each minute for his breach of faith" "Those he commands move only in command" "Nothing in love" "Now does he feel his title hang loose about him like a giant's robe upon a dwarfish thief" "That's what must give your president some sleepless nights" "I pity this man, despite the contempt he inspires in me and in you" "Those he commands move only in command, nothing in love" "A leader who does not have the love of his people is a miserable puppet" "But can we hope for anything else?" "Who but a dreary climber would have taken on this role?" "There needed to be someone who would sell his country because today France cannot willingly fall into our open arms without losing her dignity in her own eyes" "Often the most sordid go-between is responsible for the happiest union" "The go-between is no less contemptible for it, nor the union less happy" "The Paris train" "I must inform my hosts I shall be away for two weeks" "I'm delighted about going to Paris" "I have my leave and I'm going to spend it in Paris, for the first time" "It's a big day for me" "The biggest, while I wait for another which I hope for with all my soul" "It will be an even bigger day" "I can wait." "For years, if need be" "My heart is very patient" "In Paris I'll see my friends" "Many are party to the negotiations being conducted with your politicians in preparation for the wonderful union of our two nations" "In a way I'll witness this marriage" "I want to tell you that I'm happy for France whose wounds will quickly heal" "But I'm even happier for Germany and for myself" "No one will ever have benefited more from a good deed than Germany will by restoring France's greatness and freedom" "I bid you good night" "The French army threatened to invade England" "The Third Coalition took up arms on the continent" "Napoleon entered Vienna, he triumphed at Austerlitz" "In less than 100 days the Coalition was dissolved" "I was sent here by God, King of Heaven, to drive you out of France" "We didn't see him when he returned" "We knew he was there, there are many signs of a guest in the house even if he remains invisible" "But for a number of days, more than a week, we didn't see him" "Should I admit to it?" "This absence troubled me" "I thought about him" "I think I felt regret and concern" "Neither my niece nor I spoke of it" "But when in the evening, we heard his uneven tread I saw from the way she suddenly and stubbornly applied herself to her work and from the faint lines on her face giving her an expression that was both determined and expectant that her thoughts were similar to mine" "I had to go to the German headquarters to make some declaration about tyres" "Come in" "For a free Europe" "What do you want?" "Lieutenant" " Make five copies and send them one." " Yes, Lieutenant" "I didn't say anything about it to my niece, but women have a feline intuition" "All evening she kept looking up from her work and looking at me trying to discern something in my face which I forced into an expressionless blank by diligently drawing on my pipe" "She finally dropped her hands as if she was tired and folding the material asked for my permission to go to bed early" "She kissed me and I think I saw in her beautiful grey eyes a reproach and a heavy sadness" "Once she had left I felt an absurd anger rise in me" "Anger at being absurd and having an absurd niece" "What was this stupidity?" "I couldn't answer that" "If it was stupidity it seemed to be deeply ingrained" "Three days later, just as we were finishing our coffee we heard the familiar footsteps with their irregular tread..." "I suddenly remembered that winter evening when we had first heard his footsteps six months earlier" "I thought, it's raining today too" "My niece had put a square of printed silk around her shoulders" "I was warming my hands on the bowl of my pipe and it was summer!" "I thought I could see a man behind the door his forefinger raised, ready to knock and delaying the moment for by the very act of knocking, he would set in motion the future" "Finally he knocked" "Not with the lightness of one hesitating nor the brusqueness of shyness overcome" "They were three full and long knocks" "Calm, assured knocks of a decision on which there was no going back" "I was expecting to see the door open immediately as usual" "But it remained shut and I was overcome by an uncontrollable uneasiness" "He's going to leave" "What should I do to behave with dignity on this evening?" "Come in, sir" "I learned then that the hands, if you observe them well can be as expressive as the face" "Even better than the face as they more easily escape the control of the will" "I have something serious to tell you" "Everything I have said these past six months" "Everything the walls of this room have heard you have to you have to forget" "Such a light!" "I saw these victorious men" "I spoke to them" "They laughed at me" "I had been so happy to go there" "Treblinka?" " Yes, what about it?" " What's the significance of Treblinka?" " Nothing, nothing now." " Why "not any more"?" "Let's not talk about that." "It's not for the faint-hearted" "The mass executions take place in the gas chambers constructed here  with carbon monoxide and in the cremation ovens" "There is currently a throughput of 500 people a day  but improvements are underway  so that whithin two months  this figure can be increased to 2,000 people a day" "Treblinka, 21 March, 1941" "The start of spring!" "The start of spring!" "So these gas chambers are currently in use" "No, Treblinka has already served its purpose." "It's done with" "There's no one left to execute" "Chemical examination post Medical centre" "I'm surprised by your opinion on this" "Haven't you realised that we're duping them?" "Do you think we're foolish enough to let France rise up again?" "We're not musicians" "Politics isn't the stuff of fantasy." "Why do you think we went to war?" " For the sake of their old Marshal?" " We're not mad" "We have the opportunity to destroy France and that's what we will do" "Not just its power, but its spirit as well" "That's where the greatest danger lies." "That's our duty" "Make no mistake, we'll do it with smiles and with care but we'll make France crawl on its belly" "You've been too influenced by France in your youth, that's the danger but we'll cure Europe of this disease, we'll root out this poison" "We'll flatter the writers of course but we've already taken the necessary measures" "In Belgium and Holland and in every country we occupy" "French books will be allowed except technical publications" "There will be no literary works." "None!" "We'll rip the venom from the beast" "Getting frightened" "Now they fear for their pockets, their stomachs, their industry and trade" "That's all they're worried about" "There are exceptions, of course, but we'll flatter them to death" " Nothing could be easier." " Just for a plate of lentils" "Do you realise what you're doing?" " Do you realise?" " Do you think we'll falter?" "We're made of stronger stuff" "You will seal France's downfall forever" "It's a matter of life and death" "Violence can conquer but it cannot rule" "We know that." "It takes more than an army to rule" "Not at the price of the spirit Not at that price" "The spirit?" "It has already seen a lot" "The spirit is immortal." "We're building a thousand year Reich" "First we have to destroy" "That's our right and our duty" "On September 19, 1941 another German soldier was murdered" "To atone for this cowardly crime the following were shot" "Wait a moment" "A box of matches, please" "There is no hope" "No hope" "Nothing" "No one" "Not just the modern authors." "Not just Péguy, Proust, Bergson" "But all the others, all of these." "All of them" "They will extinguish the light" "Completely" "That light will never shine again on Europe" "One of these men was my friend" "He was like a brother" "We studied together." "We shared a room in Stuttgart" "We spent three months together in Nuremberg" "I played him my music" "He read me his poems" "He was sensitive and romantic" "But he left me" "He went to read his poems in München, in Munich" "To new friends" "He was always writing asking me to join him" "It was he I saw in Paris with his friends" "I saw what they had done to him" "He was the angriest of them all He combined anger and laughter" "He shouted "It's venomous, we have to extract the venom from the beast"" "I said, "Do you realise what you're doing?"" "I looked at him, I looked into his bright eyes" "He meant what he said, that's the worst part" "They will do what they say methodically and resolutely" "I know these stubborn devils" "His lips opened and I thought he was going to launch into some exhortation" "I thought he was going to encourage us to rebel" "But no word passed his lips" "They said to me, "It's our right and our duty"" ""Our duty"" "Lucky the man who so easily finds the path to his duty" "At the crossroads, you're told, take that route" "This route does not take you towards the shining heights it descends into a gloomy valley deep into the dark, dank forest" "Oh God, show me where my duty lies" "Can duty ever mean accepting the crime?" "I've exercised my rights." "I've asked to join a fighting division" "They've finally agreed to it" "I'm authorised to leave tomorrow and return to battle" "Towards Hell" "I bid you good night" "Goodbye" "Goodbye" "You'd have to have been waiting to have heard this word" "But finally I heard it." "Von Ebrennac heard it, too" "Take my things downstairs" "It is a fine thing when a soldier disobeys criminal orders" "All set, Lieutenant" "Yes, I'm coming" "My niece had made me breakfast as usual" "She served me in silence" "We drank our coffee in silence" "Outside a pale sun was shining through the mist" "It felt very cold to me" "It felt very cold to me October 1941" "The publication of this book was funded by a patriot" "The printing was completed under Nazi Occupation on 20 February 1942"