FLOSSI: MEIN ABENDESSEN MIT HITLER
Le Silence de la mer (The Silence of the Sea), directed by Jean-Pierre Melville (Jean-Pierre Grumbach) and released in 1949.
Le Silence de la mer (1949)
Based on: The novella Le Silence de la mer by Jean Bruller, published under the pseudonym “Vercors” in 1942 during the German occupation of France
Language: French
Setting: Occupied France, during WWII
Plot Summary:
A cultured and idealistic German officer, Werner von Ebrennac, is billeted with a French family — a young woman and her elderly uncle — in a quiet village. The two French hosts make a silent pact: they will not speak a word to him as an act of passive resistance.
The officer speaks gently and idealistically to them every evening, hoping for some connection. He shares his love of French culture and his belief that Germany and France can coexist. But the French hosts remain utterly silent, day after day.
Over time, the officer begins to confront the reality of the Nazi regime’s brutality and comes to a tragic moral crossroads.
The novella was a powerful piece of clandestine resistance literature, secretly distributed in Nazi-occupied France.
Melville had to seek permission directly from “Vercors”, and it became the first major postwar film about the occupation.
It remains a landmark in French Resistance cinema, known for its quiet intensity and austere style.
Army of Shadows (L’Armée des ombres, 1969).
Director: Jean-Pierre Melville
Release: 1969 (France), though it didn’t reach U.S. theaters until 2006
Based on: The 1943 novel L’Armée des ombres by Joseph Kessel, a member of the French Resistance
Army of Shadows is a somber, suspenseful drama about members of the French Resistance during World War II. It follows a small network of men and women engaged in sabotage, secret meetings, and deadly moral choices — all under the constant threat of betrayal and capture by the Nazis and the Vichy regime.
Melville fought in the Resistance and later adopted the name “Melville” in honor of Herman Melville.
He is known for his noir-inflected crime films, such as Le Samouraï, Le Cercle Rouge, and Bob le Flambeur, but Army of Shadows is his most personal and political film.
Upon release in 1969, the film was controversial in France, partly because of its portrayal of Charles de Gaulle’s Resistance network, when French intellectuals were leaning left after May 1968.
It was largely unseen in the U.S. until 2006, when it received widespread critical acclaim, including being named Best Foreign Film by several major critics’ circles.
The Plot Against America (2004) by Philip Roth is a critically acclaimed alternate history novel that imagines a chilling what-if scenario: What if Charles Lindbergh, the famous aviator and known isolationist, had been elected President of the United States in 1940, defeating Franklin D. Roosevelt?
Set in the early 1940s, the novel reimagines American history through the eyes of a young Philip Roth (the narrator), growing up in Newark, New Jersey. In this alternate timeline:
Charles Lindbergh became president and signed a non-aggression pact with Hitler, keeping the U.S. out of World War II.
Lindbergh’s presidency emboldens homegrown fascism and anti-Semitism.
Jewish families across the country, including the Roths, begin to experience rising hostility, fear, and government-sanctioned discrimination.
Lindbergh, in real life, did flirt with fascist sympathies, was part of the America First movement, and expressed anti-Semitic views.
The Seventh Cross (1944), starring Spencer Tracy and directed by Fred Zinnemann. It’s a tense, moody drama set in Nazi Germany, and it’s adapted from the 1942 novel of the same name by Anna Seghers, a German-Jewish Communist who fled the Nazis.
Germany, 1936, in the early days of the Nazi regime.
The story is centered around the escape of prisoners from a concentration camp near the fictional town of Westhofen.
Spencer Tracy plays George Heisler, one of seven political prisoners who escapes from a concentration camp.
The SS sets up seven crosses in the camp courtyard — one for each of the escapees. Each time one is caught, he is crucified on his cross.
Six of the seven fugitives are captured and executed. Heisler is the seventh.
The suspense builds as Heisler hides from the Gestapo, moving through a Nazi-controlled society while trying to find someone he can trust.
The story tracks both his journey through the moral landscape of Nazi Germany and the psychological toll it takes.
One of the earliest American films to directly depict Nazi concentration camps.
The story focuses on political prisoners, not Jews — reflecting the earlier Nazi targets of 1933–36.
Themes:
Totalitarianism and surveillance
Moral courage vs. fear
Isolation, betrayal, and solidarity
The internal conflict within ordinary Germans — some collaborators, others quiet resisters.
