AllMovie

Four top French filmmakers were involved in the "omnibus" feature Retour a la Vie. The film offers four separate stories, each involving a liberated prisoner of war. The first episode, directed by Andre Cayatte, finds a wealthy old woman (O. Revinsky), unhinged by her prison-camp experiences, trying to cope with greedy relatives who voraciously wait for her to die. The second story, directed by Jean Dreville, stars Francois Perrier as a bartender who goes to work in a hotel for American military women. Director Henri-Georges Clouzot helmed the third episode, in which a crippled, half-crazed ex-inmate (Louis Jouvet) has a tense confrontation with a former Gestapo chief. The last installment, directed by Georges Lampin, is the comic tale of a nebbishy returnee (Noel Noel) who causes an uproar when he brings his German war bride home.