Life and Nothing But

The grim post-World War I era in Europe is grist for director Bertrand Tavernier's mill in Life and Nothing But. Philipe Noiret portrays a French major who is supervising the gruesome task of counting and identifying the corpses still strewn over the battlefield. Noiret is obsessed with the notion ...more

World War I not only killed and crippled, it also stole, robbing untold thousands of soldiers of their identities. This 1989 Bertrand Tavernier film tells the story of a French army officer, Major Dellaplane, charged with restoring the identities of 350,000 dead or shell-shocked Frenchmen. As Dellaplane toils, Tavernier holds a mirror to postwar France. And what the viewer sees is revolting. Profiteering sculptors offer to immortalize soldiers in stone. Quick-find merchants promise to ferret out ...more