Dedicated to men, natives and French, which under the leadership of General Lyautey, made modern Morocco. After a historical prologue where we see Clemenceau yield to the entreaties of Lyautey, we are witnessing the arrival of settlers on Moroccan soil with the rapid rise of one of them: the ambitious Bourron. Similarly it has conquered the land from scratch, Bourron could conquer a woman, Christiane, who followed him not without confessing his love for another man. It is this love that Bourron will use later to acquire a forest of olive trees, which he believed to be the symbol of its success. Christiane accept but never forgive her husband...

Released in France as La Kermesse Heroique, Carnival in Flanders is set during the long-ago war between the Dutch and Spanish. A tiny village in Flanders is invaded by Spanish troops. The townsfolk have heard of Spanish cruelties in other towns, and decide to deflect the vanquishers by playing dead. This isn't terribly effective (you have to take a breath once in a while), so the wife of the burgomaster tries to soften up the invaders with a lavish carnival. So successful is this venture that the Spaniards allow the village to escape being decimated, or even taxed. An award-winner many times over, Carnival in Flanders was banned in Germany; evidently, Goebbels caught on that director Jacques Feyder and scenarists Bernard Zimmer and Charles Spaak were drawing deliberate parallels between the Spanish and the then-burgeoning Nazis.

1963 film by Alain Resnais

1937 film by Jean Renoir