I'm agreeing with the viewer who said that The Cross Of Lorraine was well made propaganda for its day. This film was a product of one of the big colossal studios in Hollywoood, MGM. But it wasn't accurate even at the time and people knew it even back then during World War II.A cross section of Frenchmen join to fight the Germans for the second time in the 20th century. But instead of protracted trench warfare like in 1914, the Germans overrun France as they did with the rest of Europe with their infamous tank Blitzkreig. This same group of Frenchmen are now prisoners taken to Germany.All different types become prisoners of the Nazis, the cautious and practical Jean-Pierre Aumont the only authentic Frenchman in the crowd, belligerent Gene Kelly between musicals, willing collaborationist Hume Cronyn and a priest Cedric Hardwicke forbidden to practice his religion. Among those guarding them is Peter Lorre, a German sergeant with a nice sadistic bent.The ending was ludicrous then. Unlike what you see most of the French neither collaborated or actively resisted, they just sat and waited and prayed for liberation. Very much unlike China or Russia in that conflict, no scorched earth for France in any way.You watch The Cross Of Lorraine it may be your cross to bear.

A story of courage and defiance of the French people following their surrender to the Germans in 1940.French soldiers who surrendered are duped by the Germans and are instead taken to a prison of war camp where they are subjected to the most terrible conditions.Gene Kelly, in a non-singing role, is one such soldier. Punished for hitting German soldiers he is locked in solitary confinement.In his brief appearance as a priest, Cedric Hardwicke shines as a brave, defiant messenger of the Lord. He pays the ultimate price for attempting to conduct a religious service for someone shot trying to escape.There is also treachery and collaboration on the part of Hume Cronyn, a prisoner who because he could speak German was made an interpreter by the latter and apparently this went to his head. He also pays the ultimate price as in the ironic case of Peter Lorre, a German soldier caught up in an escape attempt and mistakenly killed by his fellow Nazis.The ending shows the determination and courage of a local village. This film is a tribute to such people.

The Cross of Lorraine has many virtues - but also some serious flaws.It is gripping and involving, and has excellent performances and characterisations. Gene Kelly's excellent performance gives the lie to the claims by most of the leading film critics (eg. Leslie Halliwell, David Quinlan) that he couldn't really act (Halliwell said that his acting ability was 'minimal', whilst Quinlan said that he 'never convinced' as an actor). Had they forgotten his terrific performance here? As another reviewer has also said, the half-forgotten German character actor Tonio Selwart is also very good as the German commandant, as is Jean-Pierre Aumont as the hero.The film is also very well directed, for the most part, and has many good scenes.However, there are some disturbing aspects, partly due to the presence as co-scriptwriter of Ring Lardner Jr. Lardner was a member of the American Communist Party, despite the fact that Communism had been responsible for millions of deaths in Russia in the 1920s and 1930s. His sympathies can be seen in the film in a number of ways. The traitor, Duval, played by Hume Cronyn, is shown as a capitalist wine merchant who puts business above loyalty. The traitor could have been given any occupation at all by the scriptwriters (French collaborators were from all sorts of occupations in real life) but Lardner had to make a heavy-handed swipe at capitalism.Similarly, the Spanish republican, Rodriguez (Joseph Calleia), is shown as as a heroic figure even though this charming character's aim in life is to kill as many fascists as possible. His positive portrayal is despite the fact that Spanish republicans were responsible for the murder of thousands of priests, nuns, middle class figures and other 'enemies of the state' in republican-controlled areas of Spain in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39).There is also another uncomfortable aspect to the film, due presumably to a combination of script and direction. The film positively revels in the slaughter of German soldiers in the climatic battle - even though in actual fact those particular Germans hadn't killed anyone in the village at the point when the insurrection starts. The film gleefully shows German soldiers being burnt alive, bludgeoned to death, and so on, seeming to take pride in allocating them grisly deaths.So, although this is a high quality film in most respects, it is also deeply flawed.

Very effective American propaganda piece made in the beginning of the war and centered around a couple of handfuls of French soldiers capitulating at Marshall Pétain's order and being made prisoners of war in the German part of Alsace. Director Tay Garnett was an acknowledged master of light and shadow, and not just in the cinematographic sense. Lots of issues are at stake here, and although all the characters are somewhat larger than life, the hesitant lawyer, wonderfully, luminously played by Jean-Pierre Aumont, and the cabdriver, acted by a young, doe-eyed Gene Kelly, both help to give human texture to the admittedly rather formulaic plotline, and neither is a hero in the textbook Hollywood sense. The most interesting conflict in the film would be how to deal with the Hume Cronyn character, a French soldier who sympathizes with the Nazis and serves as a translater / snitch in the POW camp. Should he be killed without a trial, or would that, even in wartime, be a violation of basic French principles of jurisprudence and democracy?'The Cross of Lorraine' is a very, very good film and a far cry from American WW2 movies we see today, they are all much more banal and onesided.The film was obviously inspired by Jean Renoir's ultimate antiwar movie, 'The Grand Illusion', and in its turn inspired Stuart Rosenberg's tough prison movie 'Cool Hand Luke'.