The Phoney War

Aug 27, 2019

1h 32m

★ 8.0

Overview

September 3rd, 1939. Britain and France declare war on Nazi Germany, only two days after the Wehrmacht invades Poland. This day, the sad date when the fate of the world changed forever, the Phoney War began: eight months of uncertainty, preparations, evacuations and skirmishes.

Genres

History

Documentary

War

TV Movie

Production Companies

Ethan Productions

ARTE

ECPAD

Toute L'Histoire

The Phoney War Trailers

No Trailers found.

Cast

Self - Narrator (voice)

Éric Caravaca

Self - Narrator (voice)

Bertrand Chamerois

Self - Narrator (voice)

Jean-Marie Fonbonne

Self - Narrator (voice)

Laurent Lederer

Self - Narrator (voice)

Anna Flori-Lamour

Self - Narrator (voice)

Céline Payen

Self - Photographer (archive footage)

Fernand Bignon

Self - Bignon's Daughter (archive footage)

Jacqueline Bignon

Self - Army General (archive footage)

Maurice Gamelin

Self - Politician (archive footage)

Édouard Daladier

Self - Politician (archive footage)

Adolf Hitler

Self - Politician (archive footage)

Joseph Goebbels

The work of Leiden professor Bastiaans on dealing with the trauma of war victims attracts the attention of filmmaker Louis van Gasteren. He decides to make a film about the psychotherapeutic treatment with LSD of a former concentration camp prisoner in the clinic of Bastiaans. Patient Joop is arrested in September 1941 and begins a long hellish journey through various camps, until he is liberated by the Russians. When he returns to his wife, he has become a completely different man. Joop suffers from nightmares and is incapable of normal human contact. With two cameras, Van Gasteren records approximately six and a half hours of the first treatment that Joop undergoes with Bastiaans (four more will follow later). Special attention is paid to details: Joop's hands, the sweat on his forehead, a tear running slowly down his cheek. Van Gasteren reduces the recordings to more than an hour.

0.0

Maïco : Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier, la révoltée

May 25, 2024

Communist, resistance fighter, deportee, Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier is one of the great heroines of the 20th century. Nicknamed Maïco, she became a photojournalist and embraced the class struggle at the same time as she fell in love with one of the figures of the Popular Front, Paul Vaillant-Couturier. During World War II, she joined the Resistance and later gave decisive testimony at Nuremberg.

7.7

Laurel & Hardy: Their Lives and Magic

Dec 28, 2011

The lives of Stan Laurel (1890-1965) and Oliver Hardy (1892-1957), on the screen and behind the curtain. The joy and the sadness, the success and the failure. The story of one of the best comic duos of all time: a lesson on how to make people laugh.

0.0

Ralph Rush: Concentration Camp Liberator

Sep 1, 2015

Ralph Rush, a Scout in General George S. Patton's World War II Intelligence & Reconnaisance Platoons went from digging up German mines to being the first American to enter the Ohrdruf Concentration Camp; the first concentration camp liberated by the Allies.

8.3

Duel for the White House

Nov 1, 2016

A retrospective on the great election battles of the past in the United States: the Kennedy-Nixon debate in 1960, the first ever to be televised; the Republican campaign of 1972, which proved to be the starting point for the Watergate scandal; and the electoral strategy of Barack Obama in 2008, the first election to fully exploit the potential of the Internet.

7.6

The Dirty Dozen

Jun 15, 1967

12 American military prisoners in World War II are ordered to infiltrate a well-guarded enemy château and kill the Nazi officers vacationing there. The soldiers, most of whom are facing death sentences for a variety of violent crimes, agree to the mission and the possible commuting of their sentences.

0.0

Untitled Elza Soares Biopic

Invalid Date

A biopic about star Elza Soares, considered one of the greatest samba singers ever and a symbol of the struggle against racism and women discrimination in Brazil.

7.1

Sophie Scholl: The Final Days

Feb 13, 2005

In 1943, as Hitler continues to wage war across Europe, a group of college students mount an underground resistance movement in Munich. Dedicated expressly to the downfall of the monolithic Third Reich war machine, they call themselves the White Rose. One of its few female members, Sophie Scholl is captured during a dangerous mission to distribute pamphlets on campus with her brother Hans. Unwavering in her convictions and loyalty to the White Rose, her cross-examination by the Gestapo quickly escalates into a searing test of wills as Scholl delivers a passionate call to freedom and personal responsibility.

7.7

The Adventures of Werner Holt

Feb 4, 1965

Two 17-year-olds, Werner Holt and Gilbert Wolzow, are pulled out of school and into Hitler's army. Gilbert becomes a fanatical soldier; but at the front, Werner begins to understand the senselessness of war.

7.0

Valkyrie

Dec 25, 2008

Wounded in Africa during World War II, Nazi Col. Claus von Stauffenberg returns to his native Germany and joins the Resistance in a daring plan to create a shadow government and assassinate Adolf Hitler. When events unfold so that he becomes a central player, he finds himself tasked with both leading the coup and personally killing the Führer.

5.3

Hear the Silence

Jun 11, 2016

1941, Ukraine. A group of German soldiers occupy a small town populated exclusively by women and children of German descent, way behind enemy lines. There's tension from the beginning, that always threatens to erupt in violence from both sides.

3.0

The Street Performers

Oct 5, 2015

This documentary-style short follows two impoverished teens performing on the streets of London in the days leading up to the London Blitz of 1940.

7.0

Betrayed

Dec 25, 2020

During World War II, millions of Jews from all over Europe are deported and killed in German concentration camps. When the German troops invade Norway, the Norwegian Jews feel safe and protected. But anti-Semitism knows no borders and as the war escalates in Europe, the situation changes drastically. Suddenly, their radios are taken away; their passports are stamped with a big J and one day, all the men men over the age of 15 are arrested and taken to prisons camps. Many of the women left behind are too frightened to escape and are desperately waiting for their husbands and sons to come back home. On November 26, 1942, hundreds of Jews are picked up by the police in the middle of the night and are transported to the dock in Oslo. Unknowing and frightened men, women, children, sick and old are forced on board the awaiting German cargo ship "SS DONAU". The ship leaves with 532 Norwegian Jews onboard; 302 men, 188 women and 42 children. The end station is Auschwitz.

4.1

The Last Drop

Apr 13, 2006

Different factions in WWII-era Holland race to find a stash of Nazi gold.

6.0

Mr. Kingstreet's War

May 1, 1973

A couple sets up an African game preserve, only to have British and Italian armies fight over the waterholes.

6.5

The Cardinal

Dec 12, 1963

A young Catholic priest from Boston confronts bigotry, Nazism, and his own personal conflicts as he rises to the office of cardinal.

6.2

The Victors

Nov 22, 1963

Intercutting dramatic vignettes with newsreel footage, the story follows the characters from an infantry squad as they make their way from Sicily to Germany during the end of World War II.