De Gaulle [Version française]

BiographyHistory

Year2006

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7.3

This film is a labor of love, delicious to watch and full of tenderness for General de Gaulle as a person. Made for TV, (two episodes 1 hour 3/4 each), it retraces some of the most salient events in the General's life, from the start of WW II up to his assuming power in 1959, events which are evoked through family conversations or meetings with his close companions, i.e. his supporters through his political career. There are also actual newsreels from these events. But the standpoint of the film is not primarily historical - a knowledge of the period's history being almost a prerequisite to fully understand the film's niceties -; the standpoint is mostly personal: an effort to recreate what it felt to live close to this great man. There are frequent flashbacks to de Gaulle's role during WW II, his dealings with Reynaud, Churchill, Roosevelt (and Gen. Giraud - his onetime American-backed rival). The second part of the film describes, no less interestingly, his life through the IVth Republic. Born in 1944, having lived in France through the post-war political turmoils and the Algerian "events", also most interested in the history of WW II, I have found this film very credible. The dialogues in French (or broken French in the case of Churchill), delivered by excellent actors, literally recreate the "look and feel" of those times. The film is such that the dialogues can be savoured primarily by fluent French speakers. I do not know of the version in English - which may nevertheless be of interest to those seeking a French viewpoint on de Gaulle's life. __ .