Which Land was Theirs?

After I finished watching this excellent and moving film, I was curious to see what my video book (Retriever) had to say about it, and was surprised to read as the plot description began, "A timid French schoolteacher gathers enough courage to defy..."

I am reading the IMDb comments section now, and while only halfway down the first of three pages at the time of this writing, already half had concluded the setting as France (one reviewer even titled his piece, "A Breath of Gallic Fresh Air").

Yet the film clearly begins with the title card, "SOMEWHERE IN EUROPE," and seconds later we see a newspaper on the street with the news of Hitler's invasion called "The Daily," as un-French sounding as one can get. The film went out of its way to make the location nondescript; even the names of the characters are "American" generic. There are no French references anywhere, as far as I could see, and I can understand the reason: the director, Jean Renoir (who was evidently in his country of France when the Germans took over, and people are naturally assuming the movie he helmed must have shared the same setting -- which is very presumptuous, given that the primary screenwriter, Dudley Nichols, was not French) wished to present the notion that we are not in a specific country but in every country; the script makes references as to how people from everywhere -- even Germany itself -- can be influenced in the same manner, once confronted by dominant and dangerous forces.

A mild reminder of how people can take something they think must be the case, and present it as a cold and hard fact. In short, just because we see something in print does not always means it must be true.