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Though the prime purpose of the film is propaganda to strengthen Allied resolve in the fight against Nazism, critics at the time and since have noted that Nichols and Renoir adopt a distinctively nuanced approach. Walter Slezak as Major Erich von Keller.Freed and back in his schoolroom, with a proud Louise by his side, he is reading to the boys the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen when German soldiers come to take him away. Back in court, Albert is all the more eloquent in the cause of liberty and the jurors proclaim him innocent. To emphasize the point, in the morning the 10 hostages (including his friend Professor Sorel) are shot beneath his window. That night, von Keller comes to his cell and offers a deal: If he will keep quiet next day, new forged evidence will acquit him. When in his defence he starts an impassioned plea for resistance, the prosecutor requests an adjournment. Regarding it as a matter for the civilian courts, the Germans expect Albert to be condemned. Albert bursts in a minute later, furious at discovering his mother's treachery, and is found with George's corpse and gun. George tells von Keller and then, in a crisis of conscience, shoots himself. Albert's mother, jealous of Louise, tells George that it was Paul. After turning a blind eye to previous acts of resistance (such as a wrecked train) in the hope of preserving good relations with the town, von Keller must now act and takes 10 local hostages, saying they will be shot in a week if the guilty person who threw the grenade is not found. Her brother Paul, who works in the yard, is an active resister and, trying to kill the German commandant Major von Keller with a grenade, instead kills two German soldiers. Louise is however engaged to George, the head of the railway yard, who like many in the town believes that collaboration with the German occupation is the only logical course. Widely regarded as ineffectual, he embarrasses everybody by his panic during an Allied air raid. This is a fascinating topic, but Zandvliet does it scant justice.Albert is an unmarried schoolmaster living with his dominating mother and secretly in love with his neighbour and fellow teacher Louise. Moreover, the lack of insight into the sergeant's wartime experiences makes his transformation from martinet to mentor seem as melodramatic as the incidents involving his faithful dog and a widowed farmer's mournful daughter. Thus, while the clearance sequences are suspensefully photographed and edited, they lack the potency they might have had if we had known more about the resourceful Rasmussen, contrasting twins Ernst and Werner and the embittered Helmut Morbach. Unfortunately, Zandvliet offers so little backstory that it's difficult to get a handle on Danish paratrooper Sgt Rasmussen (Roland Moller) and the 14 youngsters under his command.
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Writer/director Martin Zandvliet explores the dangers they faced and the prejudice and privation they had to endure in this intriguing re-creation of one of the conflict's many forgotten sideshows. When peace came, German PoWs were dispatched to remove them. Convinced that the west coast of Denmark was a potential invasion site, the Nazis planted some two million landmines along its beaches during the Second World War.