At 4 p.m. Sunday, May 15 the Jewish Film Society will feature a screening of “Diplomacy” in the Jewish Community Center Arts & Education Building, 2 Millstone Campus Drive. This is the final film of the film society’s season. 

“Diplomacy” is a feature film that begins as the Allies march toward Paris in the summer of 1944. Hitler gives orders that the French capital should not fall into enemy hands, or if it does, then “only as a field of rubble.” The person assigned to carry out this barbaric act is Wehrmacht commander of Greater Paris, General Dietrich von Choltitz, who already has mines planted on the Eiffel Tower, in the Louvre and Notre Dame and on the bridges over the Seine. However, at dawn on Aug. 25, Swedish Consul General Raoul Nordling steals into German headquarters through a secret underground tunnel and there starts a tension-filled game of cat and mouse as Nordling tries to persuade Choltitz to abandon his plan .

In this adaptation of the stage success by Cyril Gély, the great Volker Schlöndorff (Academy Award winner of “The Tin Drum”) has created a psychologically elaborate game of political manners between two highly contrasting characters. While Choltitz entrenches himself behind his duty to obey unquestioningly all military orders, Nordling tries everything he can to appeal to reason and humanity and prevent the senseless destruction of the beloved “City of Light.”

The film is free to Jewish Film Society Members and $8 for guests.