The film is based on a real incident during World War I when soldiers of opposite sides climbed out of the trenches on Christmas Eve to call their own halt to the killing and fraternize in celebration of the holiday. A soldier who had been a German opera star sang for the men. The film fictionalizes the event as we get to know various soldiers from the Scotland, France and Germany. There is a gritty reality to the scenes in the trenches, the bodies in the field between and the prospect of facing of impending death.

Why then muddy the situation by insisting on bringing in a Danish opera singer as the lover accompanying the German singer to the front lines, have her sing as well and even develop a little subplot of her insisting on a plan for the two to escape and become enemy prisoners? I find no mention of such a woman in the background notes about the basis for the film. It is so unlikely a development that it renders the whole section of the film impossibly corny.

“Joyeux Noël” is moving more because of what it has to say than because of the way it says it, except at certain moments when it excels as convincing drama and poignantly suggests that there should be no boundaries between human beings. (Jean Renoir made the point with supreme artistry in “Grand Illusion.”) The film also is perceptive in the way it depicts the backlash to the truce, which upset authorities because it ran counter to the effort to portray the enemy as barbaric in order to stimulate the urge to kill. This was in 1914, early in the war that had four more years of carnage that exacted an incredible toll. The see-sawing of the trench warfare took on an idiotic aura.