Legge di guerra (1961)

The story takes place in Yugoslavia in 1943. After an attack on a German military train, which cost the lives of three soldiers, the German command orders that thirty hostages, chosen at random from the nearest village, be shot in retaliation unless the person responsible for the attack voluntarily turns himself in within an hour and a half. The village schoolteacher, who carried out the sabotage, is torn by conflicting feelings. He rebels against the idea that thirty innocent people should pay with their lives for his actions, but the commander of the partisan unit he belongs to has ordered him not to surrender, since the sabotage is part of the normal conduct of war and the responsibility for the massacre would fall entirely on the Germans. With the arrival of reinforcements making a partisan raid to try to free the prisoners impossible, those who have a loved one among the condemned decide to find the culprit themselves and hand him over to the firing squad. Suspicion falls on the village watchmaker, a man disliked by everyone and well known for his violent temper. He is arrested and handed over to the Germans, who release the hostages. The changed circumstances of the drama lead the schoolteacher to resolve his moral dilemma heroically. He cannot allow an innocent man to be killed in his place merely because the villagers have chosen him as a scapegoat: the act of war would thereby become a murder. He therefore presents himself to the Germans, who shoot him in front of the church after releasing the watchmaker.