Love and war with very strong nationalist feelings which takes place in Alsace, occupied by Germany during the first W.W. This film has its strong points in the intense acting of the main character and above all of his mother, both of whom escape the general black and white characterization of most of the other actors of the film, and manage to deliver a good portrait of the psychological struggle between unconditional love and loyalty to their fight for justice.

The story of this restoration begins in the early 90’s when the Cinematheque Francaise decides to restore this film using the only available copy then existing, an incomplete Dutch print containing Dutch intertitles, found in the Nederlands Filmmuseum. A few years later, a second copy, containing different shots, but still not complete, was found in the BFI, with English intertitles. A decision has been taken to go ahead with a new restoration of this film in order to make a more complete copy combining the two sources. Being  the English copy the longest and most complete of the two prints I have used this as the starting point of the reconstruction, inserting there the missing extracts or longer shots from the Dutch print, whose degradation state was also worse. When the missing extracts from the Dutch print contained intertitles, they have been translated into English. Overall the new restoration contains 16 new titles. The print is still not complete.

Simona Monizza, Mark Paul Meyer, Nederlands Filmmuseum