The Red Collar

.......the more I love my dog!

This could be the moral of this story (which is not based on real events ) in which ,during the WW1 slaughter ,men were treated like dogs .

The stubborn spirit of Yves Boisset have certainly inspired Jean Becker ,son of the illustrious Jacques .The hero is a simple farm boy ,educated by an intellectual peasant woman , who has him read Goethe and Rousseau ;it may explain his longing for a revolution (oddly the woman never hints at Jean Jaurès ,first martyr of WW1)and the failed fraternization with the Bulgarian soldiers : like in the famous "joyeux Noel" , fraternizations were frequent on all the fronts (and punished by the staff officers -generally fatigue duties or prison ,death penalties were rare for this "fault" )All the soldier's trials are flashbacks .His dog follows him everywhere,why not ? Both Rin-Tin-Tin and Lassie did it before him.

The depiction of the rural world is successful :the cafe, the village idiot, the women's hard labor ,the inhabitants almost all favorable to the prisoner , arrested for "outrage to the nation "(one learns what really happened in the last scenes), the thundering fanfare blaring "le régiment de Sambre et Meuse "....

Cluzet as the aristocratic career officer who,after a little soul-searching , discovers his values can be called into question is true to himself ;but Nicolas Duvauchelle has the edge in his part of a rebellious soldier who despises the Legion d'Honneur.

I'd tone things a bit for the "explanation" and the soap opera side of the denouement .