Watch Le Colonel Chabert

Le Colonel Chabert is a French film based on the novel by Honoré de Balzac. The movie adaptation is about the old colonel, Chabert, whom is thought to have died at the Battle of Eylau in 1807. He is famously remembered for being a war hero. However, although he was severely wounded during the battle and left with a traumatic head injury, Chabert survived. It takes ten years for him to find his way back to Paris, where he intends to reclaim his former life of wealth and the wife that he had left behind.

After finally arriving in Paris, in February of 1817, Chabert requests the aid of the lawyer Derville in resurrecting his former identity. The case turns out to be very complicated because Chabert’s widow has remarried a nobleman of the new regime, Count Ferraud, and is now the Countess Ferraud. If her first husband is reclassified as living by the legal courts, she is faced with the charge of bigamy and risks losing the high status and influential lifestyle she acquired through possession of her presumed dead husband’s wealth. Her current husband, Count Ferraud, uses her greater wealth to fund his ambitious schemes, meanwhile planning to marry better if he can be rid of her. Derville, feeling compassion for Chabert