The Grand Maneuver

Les Grandes Manoeuvres is a wonderfully autumnal work from Rene Clair - it was also his first film in color, and he uses the production design and the story, coupled with the range of available hues to impart a dreamlike quality to plot, a romantic escapade by a vain military officer on the eve of World War I. Michele Morgan (Passage To Marseilles, The Chase) is the object of Gerard Phillipe's affections in this wistful tale of a world and an era gone by. (Criterion)