Joyeux Noël (English: Merry Christmas) is a 2005 film depicted through the eyes of French, British and German soldiers revolves around the World War I Christmas truce of December 1914. It tells the story of 6 character: Gordon; Audebert; Horstmayer; Palmer and German tenor Nikolaus Sprink and his Danish fiance, mezzo-soprano, Anna Sørensen.
1971
25 September 1950, Le Blanc, Ille-et-Vilaine, France
19 October 1957, Forchheim, Upper Franconia, Bavaria, Germany
26 June 1966, Armentières, Nord, France
16 July 1962, Friedberg, Hesse, West Germany
17 January 1972, Kreuzberg, Berlin, Germany
22 February 1972, Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico
19 October 1983, Aberdeen, Grampian, Scotland, UK
1981, Bucharest, Romania
22 November 1936, Bonn, Germany
1974, Vienna, Austria
4 January 1963, Cambrai, Nord, France
1979
August 28, 1969 in Munich, Bavaria, West Germany
24 January 1928, Brunoy, Essonne, France
15 July 1976, Algermissen, Lower Saxony, Germany
December 14, 2014
A vivid, quietly powerful recreation of a truly extraordinary moment in history: just not an overwhelmingly moving one.
December 14, 2014
For all their friendship and yuletide charity, the men must return to battle, and the miracle of Christmas does little to alter the course of war. By the end of it, they must decide if they've witnessed their own grand illusion.
November 27, 2007
Some might castigate its unabashed sentimentality, but I found myself moved, especially when I recalled that this was supposedly the war to end all wars.
December 14, 2014
Unfolding slowly, then building in momentum like the hymns themselves, this entire sequence is tremendously affecting.
August 03, 2006
It's a respectful, sobering tribute to the flickering of humanitarian spirit amid the darkest days of conflict and, as such, surely a Christmas film for the ages.
December 14, 2014
Except for a few missteps, the movie is so beautifully and sensitively rendered in its particulars, in its characterizations of soldiers and officers, and in its dramatization of a nearly miraculous event, that the result is an affecting piece of cinema.
December 14, 2014
The horror of the war, and the startling dignity of these mud-spattered soldiers, will doubtless thaw stony hearts. But the drama is as conventional as a ham sandwich.
December 14, 2014
It is such a wonderful story and I think it's a rather prosaic treatment that it's been given.
December 14, 2014
It isn't exactly All Quiet on the Western Front or Oh! What a Lovely War. What it lacks is proper finesse.
December 14, 2014
You can't watch this film without thinking about modern wars and about how much easier it is to demonize a foe when language and customs are more at odds.
June 22, 2006
Well-photographed and acted, Joyeux Noël suffers most from the inevitable comparison with its betters, such films as Paths of Glory or All Quiet on the Western Front.
