Le vieux fusil (known as The Old Gun a.k.a. Vengeance One by One in the US and The Last Straw in UK) is a 1975 French film directed by Robert Enrico, and starring Philippe Noiret, Romy Schneider and Jean Bouise.
During the German retreat from France in the summer of 1944, Julien Dandieu is an ageing, embittered surgeon in the local hospital of Montauban. Frightened by the German army entering Montauban, Dandieu asks his friend Francois to drive his wife Clara and his daughter Florence to the remote village where he owns a chateau. One week later, Dandieu sets off to meet them for the weekend, but a Waffen SS squad has now occupied the village and killed its inhabitants. His daughter and wife, who was raped, were both killed by the cruel soldiers who shot his young daughter and immolated his wife with a flamethrower. Dandieu decides to kill as many Germans as possible to avenge his family. He takes an old gun he used as a child while hunting with his father and starts to ruthlessly kill them one by one.
This film provides examples of:
- Action Survivor: Dandieu. He's not a soldier to begin with but he ends up wiping out a whole Waffen SS squad.
- Chekhov's Gun: The flamethrower that the Germans left unattended.
- Flashback: Several flashbacks show Dandieu's previous life with his wife over the course of the film. Some others feature her rape and killing.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: The last German soldier is incinerated with the flamethrower.
- Kick the Dog: The rape and murder of Dandieu's wife is shown in all its horror, as well as the murder of his daughter.
- Kill It with Fire: The SS roast Dandieu's wife with a flamethrower after raping her.
- The Lost Lenore: Clara is this to Dandieu.
- Mood Whiplash: Mainly the contrast between Dandieu's Happy Flashbacks and the SS squad's atrocities against his family, and with his own Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
- Rape and Revenge: The SS squad raped and killed Dandieu's wife.
- Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: And it will be avenged accordingly.
- La Résistance: Dandieu is not an active resistant but he provides some help to the Resistance, hidden behind his respected surgeon status. The following tragic events turn him into a real one.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Dandieu goes on a merciless rampage against the German soldiers after finding out that they raped and killed his wife and killed his daughter.
- Shotguns Are Just Better: Dandieu kills several German soldiers with his old hunting shotgun.
- Too Happy to Live: Dandieu, his wife and daughter are shown sharing happy moments in flashbacks. These couldn't last.
- Unstoppable Rage: Dandieu's vengeful rage won't stop until all the German soldiers are dead.
- Very Loosely Based on a True Story: The film's story is very loosely inspired by the massacre of Oradour-sur-Glane
. Apart from being set in rural France and involving a Waffen SS regiment that massacred the population of a village, it has nothing in common with the event.
