Joyeux Noël (Merry Christmas) on DVD

Peter_Suciu

Peter_Suciu

Well-known member
I just received my copy of Joyeux Noël. The picture quality and sound are very good.

The DVD is a little light on extras however, but certainly worth having on DVD.
 
The wife rented it for me the other night and we put it in at 9 PM. It is a great movie but alas I fell asleep in the middle of it :ANGRY:

She had to take it back to blockbuster the next day so I missed out on seeing the rest. :o

Guess I will have to buy the DVD

hey Peter; you know about electronics...isn't there some gizmo that one can buy and hook up to himself to jolt him awake when he is falling asleep in front of the TV?

Ken.
 
Hey Ken--
I didn't see you joined this forum. Welcome.

Alas, there is no stay awake device that I've seen just yet. I'll have to keep an eye open I suppose!
 
zipperheads9 said:
What is the jist of the film? Sorry i have not seen any promo's ,under my rock.
Mark
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It is about the Christmas Truce of 1914. A little far fetched in some parts, but overall a good Holiday movie.
 
The movie is based on the book Silent Night by Stanley Weintraub, and I think most of the content is true, I doubt the bit about the opera star singing to the troops and the guy's defection, but the rest of it seems to be representative of what happened all along the front, to include the reprisals by the leadership at the end.
I thought the photography was very good, and the acting was decent. I particularly enjoyed the multi lingual aspect of it.
 
I doubt the bit about the opera star singing to the troops and the guy's defection
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Me too. Besides that I doubt seriuosly if Scottish and Trench Troops shelter together in a German trench for an artillery bombardment, after the Germans sheltered in the French trench.
Alas, I think this film is half as good as the other quite recent, French WW1 movie: "Un Long Dimanche de Fiancailles". You should not miss this "Long Dimanch"-movie! I enjoyed it very much. The story and the images of Long Dimanch are a lot more credible, than the final scenes of Joyeux Noel.
But Joyeux Noel was anyway a movie, I did not want too miss either. It is still interesting enough to watch.

Pierre
 
I agree with Pierre. The English title of the film is A Very Long Engagement, and, even though it is based on a work of fiction by Sébastien Japrisot, it manages to be more believable than Joyeux Nöel.

I have seen Joyeux Nöel twice, once in the theater and once on DVD, and, though its heart is in the right place, it gets the history so wrong it's pathetic. The biggest of several inconceivable gaffes occurs when the Bavarians, now apparently a Strafbataillon, are sent, via cattle boxcars, to fight the Battle of Tannenberg in the spring of 1915 (when that battle had already been fought between 26 and 30 August 1914).

My personal favorite of the recent cinema of the Great War is François Dupeyron's La Chambre des Officiers (2001).

Gillies MacKinnon's Regeneration (1997) and William Boyd's The Trench (1999) are also excellent.
 
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