Edward Copeland's Tangents

i'm interested to know which of the 5 you don't think deserved it's nod.

i haven't caught them all yet myself.
 

Don't Tell was the only one I didn't like.
 

Being interested in World War One as a historical period (as this war was a clear sample that wars aren't any good), I always keep an eye on films about the subject.

While not the first class (or indeed as pungent) as WW1 classics as Kubrick's Paths of Glory" or Tavernier's "La Vie et rien d'autre", "Joyeux Noel" brings to wider audiences the dramatization of a little known historic episode, which happened throughout the war (though never approved by the generals). Sometime ago I read a book by Tony Ashworth, "Trench Warfare, 1914-18: The Live and Let Live System" which was a study, from testimonials and written accounts, of the attitudes of Great War combatants towards the enemies in the trench across no-man's land. The author concluded that, when not actually involved in fighting, many soldiers adopted an unnoficial truce (if only in the "don't bother me and I won't bother you" principle) and their offensive spirit was far from what their superiors in the rear desired

P.S: Having just read your old post on "Don't Tell", I can tell you something about dubbing in Europe or, at least the Spanish case. In Spain, people is normally very reticent to see films in the original subtitled version, so the great majority of films are released dubbed (with only some copies for the small -but growing- sector of the audience who prefers to listen the actors' original voices). It is perhaps not illogical that the level of knowledge of foreign languages in Spain leaves much to desire. Dubbing is, on the other hand, a good and plentiful (foreign films, commercials...) option for Spanish stage actors to make ends meet, as they often have good, well trained, charactheristic and modulated voices. In contrast, a number of Spanish film actors -too many, to my taste- seem to have been born for silent movies: it's sad how they decline to work their voices proper to match their -otherwise good- gestual and facial expressivity. Javier Bardem is -to me- an example of a good actor whose voice and delivery sound somewhat flat to me.
 

Of course, I can't vouch for the historical accuracy of the event, though accounts I've read say the movie embellishes to some extent but that it did happen. It wouldn't surprise me that something like this could happen in isolation in any war, especially given the reaction of the higher-ups in the military command once they learn about it. German troops could be rampaging elsewhere but in this isolated area, I imagine it could have happened.
 

The events in Joyeux Noel certainly did occur in a number of places along the front and as the film describes the participants on both sides were punished afterwards.

Unofficial truces were common on the Western Front - to bring in wounded and dead and such like. But what makes the Christmas truces of 1914 different is that they were genuine expressions of Christmas spirit amongst the ordinary combatants. In those days Christmas perhaps meant more than it does today and the reaching out between combatants was a genuine expression of that. It wasn't unusual in earlier wars for such truces to occur - they were commonplace. Perhaps what's different is the generals banning what for the soldiers was a normal and reasonable expectation based on past expectations. Alas the soldiers soon learnt that Christmas had no place in a modern industrial war like WW1.

I enjoyed Joyeux Noelle for what it really was, a Christmas film and a film about WW1, perhaps one of the better of the recent crop of them made in the last ten years, second only perhaps to "Beneath Hill 60".

PS yes Scottish troops did have bagpipes in the trenches. Piper was an official rank in Scottish regiments. The pipes were both used for amusement and to accompany them into battle.