Now playing: Trailer
Joyeux Noel (Merry Christmas) Trailers
- 2008-01-13 Trailer
Want to Buy Joyeux Noel (Merry Christmas) Posters?
This film is based on the true stories of the 1914 WWI Christmas ceasefires along the Western front.
The story centres upon six main characters: a Scottish priest working as a stretcher-bearer; a Scottish Lieutenant; the French Lieutenant Audebert, the reluctant son of a general, whose call to fight has meant leaving his bedbound pregnant wife; a Jewish German Lieutenant, and two famous opera stars, German tenor Nikolaus Sprink and his Danish lover Anna Sörensen.
Christmas arrives, along with the snow, and bundles of presents from families and the army head office. That night the soldiers' lives on both sides of the trenches are changed forever; drawn together by Christmas spirit, they lay down their arms on December 24, 1914. It all begins when the Scots begin to sing Christmas songs and then Sprink responds by singing for his German comrades and exits his trench with a small Christmas tree singing "Adeste Fideles". He leaves the tree in the middle of no-mans land. The French, German, and Scotish officers meets and agree on a cease-fire for the evening. The various soldiers meet and wish each other "Joyeux Noël," "Frohe Weihnachten" and "Merry Christmas." They exchange photos of loved ones, chocolate, and champagne. The Priest with the Scots says a brief mass and the soldiers retire deeply moved.
The following day the officers have coffee together and decide to "bury their dead on the day Christ was born". After sheltering each other during an artillery barrage, the French, Scottish and German soldiers face the inevitable consequences from their superiors. The Scots are ordered to shoot a French soldier : Ponchel, the local Ch'ti aid to Audebert who is disguised as a German. The French Commander is reprimanded by his General who happens to be his father and sent to an almost certain death in Verdun as a punishment while the Germans are shipped to the Eastern Front while singing a Scottish carol they learned during the events which will eventually become the tune for L'Hymne des Fraternisés/ I'm Dreaming Of Home. As their train pulls away the word "Tannenberg" is painted on the side of the cars. This was the site of the great German victory over the Russians--and also referenced in the classic World War I film with a similar theme, the Grand Illusion, but with regards to the German dead and futility of war.
Source: Wikipedia
The story centres upon six main characters: a Scottish priest working as a stretcher-bearer; a Scottish Lieutenant; the French Lieutenant Audebert, the reluctant son of a general, whose call to fight has meant leaving his bedbound pregnant wife; a Jewish German Lieutenant, and two famous opera stars, German tenor Nikolaus Sprink and his Danish lover Anna Sörensen.
Christmas arrives, along with the snow, and bundles of presents from families and the army head office. That night the soldiers' lives on both sides of the trenches are changed forever; drawn together by Christmas spirit, they lay down their arms on December 24, 1914. It all begins when the Scots begin to sing Christmas songs and then Sprink responds by singing for his German comrades and exits his trench with a small Christmas tree singing "Adeste Fideles". He leaves the tree in the middle of no-mans land. The French, German, and Scotish officers meets and agree on a cease-fire for the evening. The various soldiers meet and wish each other "Joyeux Noël," "Frohe Weihnachten" and "Merry Christmas." They exchange photos of loved ones, chocolate, and champagne. The Priest with the Scots says a brief mass and the soldiers retire deeply moved.
The following day the officers have coffee together and decide to "bury their dead on the day Christ was born". After sheltering each other during an artillery barrage, the French, Scottish and German soldiers face the inevitable consequences from their superiors. The Scots are ordered to shoot a French soldier : Ponchel, the local Ch'ti aid to Audebert who is disguised as a German. The French Commander is reprimanded by his General who happens to be his father and sent to an almost certain death in Verdun as a punishment while the Germans are shipped to the Eastern Front while singing a Scottish carol they learned during the events which will eventually become the tune for L'Hymne des Fraternisés/ I'm Dreaming Of Home. As their train pulls away the word "Tannenberg" is painted on the side of the cars. This was the site of the great German victory over the Russians--and also referenced in the classic World War I film with a similar theme, the Grand Illusion, but with regards to the German dead and futility of war.
Source: Wikipedia
