Advanced search
- TITLES
- NAMES
- COLLABORATIONS
Search filters
Enter full date
to
or just enter yyyy, or yyyy-mm below
to
to
to
Exclude
Only includes titles with the selected topics
to
In minutes
to
1-3 of 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. __ .
- 1969. Général de Gaulle, who has just resigned from the French presidency, is having a walk on the seaside somewhere in Ireland. Accompanied by his wife Yvonne and by an identified man looking like the actor Paul Meurisse, he is exchanging views with them. But what exactly is he saying? Is he talking about his shining hours : his triumphant return to Paris after the war years as he was acclaimed by one million Parisians or his other glorious return to power in 1958 after a twelve-year eclipse? Or about his darker side : his immense pride, his contempt for those who do not live up to their ambitions, his political calculations? Or else about his struggles in the shadows against Churchill, Roosevelt, Giraud and the supporters of French Algeria, no less heroic after all than his formidable fight against Hitler and the Axis forces? Whatever the case may be, when Charles de Gaulle dies several months later while playing a game of solitaire, it is a political giant who disappears.