In 1938, Christian-Jaque wove his marvelous thriller, Les Disparus du Saint-Agil (Boys School) around the antics of teenage protagonists who embodied for him an innate sense of rebellion-the spirit of liberation. In 1941, he was forced to more deeply encode his message if he was to prove, as he has stated his intention, "That France hasn't completely fallen to its knees...that the French cinema isn't dead after all." Written by Pierre Véry, L'Assassinat du Père Noel is again a teenage thriller, set in an isolated French town where a series of intrigues revolve around a globemaker who dreams of exotic lands as he draws their outlines and spins his fantasies for the local youth.
L'Assassinat du Père Noel is indeed one of the quintessential films of the Occupation, in that the whole film seems a kind of coded metaphor for the atmosphere of the time.... (T)here's an omnipresent tone of claustrophobia and suffocation...(which) could be read as a symbol for the nation in microcosm, likewise cut off by the Occupation from all contact with the world beyond its borders...." --Stephen Harvey, Museum of Modern Art