Joyeaux Noel and Sophie Scholl

Two Academy Award nominated foreign films you should not see on a double bill unless you like feeling depressed.

If you have no choice but to see them together, see “Sophie Scholl” first. “Joyeaux Noel,” which won the Oscar for best foreign film, at least has some warm, fuzzy moments in it, like when a French soldier tells his lieutenant how he always had coffee with his mum at ten o’clock every morning. He even carries around an alarm clock that he sets every day to go off at that time, to remind him. (Alarm clocks in 1914 were huge, heavy, metal jobs that you had to wind up every day and had bells and clangers on top that clanged really, really loud.)

“Joyeaux Noel,” written and directed by Christian Carion, is a fictionalized account of a truce called on Christmas Eve during World War One, “The Great War,” which began in 1914 and ended in 1918. It is estimated that 8 million soldiers died. Though the war included British, American, Russian, German, Australian, Scottish, French, and other countries, the film focuses on a small contingent of French, Scottish, and German troops in the French countryside, dug in, in barbed-wire fortified trenches, not 50 to 100 feet apart, outside a farm. It is close to Christmas. We see gruesome hand to hand fighting, images of faces and limbs blown off, and wounded soldiers writhing in pain, in the mud and snow. The German government sends a bunch of small Christmas trees to the front to cheer up its soldiers; but the soldiers find them a nuisance and toss them out of the way as they hustle through the narrow trenches. In Germany, a couple, opera stars Anna Sorenson (Diane Kruger) and Nikolous Sprink (Benno Furmann) have their duet interrupted when an officer struts on stage and announces that Germany has been besieged. In the French trenches, we see Lieutenant Audebert (Gullaume Canet) in his stronghold, vomiting in fear before going out to rally his men. The Scots are joshing playfully, bolstering their spirits.

On Christmas Eve, the Germans decorate their trees with lighted candles and talk about what Christmas means to them, as do the Scots and French. The Scots play carols on their bagpipes. The Germans line the tops of their trenches with the trees. Soon everyone is singing carols. The leaders decide to agree on a truce, just for Christmas Eve and Christmas day. They climb out of their trenches and tromp across the snow to meet in the middle and shake hands. Sprink, a reservist, has been called up and is sent to the front where Anna joins him. When they meet, he warns her that he has lice. (This is mentioned at least twice in the film, but you never see anyone scratching. Kruger and Furmann are too pretty to be seen scratching, anyway.) A French chaplain delivers mass (the majority are Catholic). The couple sing, everyone gets drunk, and on Christmas day, play soccer and exchange pictures of loved ones. They write letters home about the truce. The through-line of the film centers on a couple of the chaplain’s altar boys who are brothers. One dies of his wounds in his brother’s arms and the surviving brother holds himself apart from the festivities and eventually mistakenly shoots and kills a major character. Bad things begin to happen when the soldiers’ letters are confiscated by the censors and the bishop, played by Ian Richardson at his creepiest best, delivers a sermon that could have been written by Bush’s war propagandists.

Director Marc Rothemund’s ”SOPHIE SCHOLL” is a dark, claustrophobic study in suspect interrogation. The film, written by Fred Breinersdorfer, is set in 1943 and is also based on truth. Sophie Scholl (Julia Jentsch) and her brother, Hans (Fabian Hinrichs), are youthful members of White Rose, an anti-Nazi resistance group that writes and distributes tracts pointing out the truth behind the Nazi regime. They are caught delivering tracts in the University of Munich and immediately imprisoned. We see only Sophie’s interrogation by the official, Gerd Alexander Held, played by Robert Mohr, not her brother’s. This is the only time Sophie leaves her cell and her “celli,” also a prisoner, who’s there to see doesn’t commit suicide. So far, the only outside scenes are of the Scholl’s apartment where they printed and stuffed the tracts, and in the halls of the university. The rest of the scenes are of the passageway between her cell and inside Held’s office. The interrogation is lengthy and intense but not brutal. She and Held often engage in philosophical discussions of morals and people’s rights in civilized society. Jentsch is fresh-faced with shiny brown straight hair, held back from her face by a plain clip. She wears a calf-length skirt, white blouse, and cranberry red cardigan, and low-heeled shoes, throughout. She appears unflappable, denying everything. Soon the evidence mounts and her stories conflict with those of her brother’s. Within a few months of their capture, she, her brother, and a friend are swiftly executed by guillotine. There are no warm, fuzzy scenes in this film. However, during the final credits we see real-life, sepia-toned photos of a happy, smiling Sophie on vacation in a bathing suit, hanging out with friends, and some shots of her with her mother and father. Some background like this during the film could have saved it from being a viewing chore. Both films are still playing in various theatres in the Bay Area.