Having read Julian Jackson’s absolutely astonishing biography of Charles de Gaulle, I was excited to know that two feature-length films based on the book had been produced in France.
Now the films have been released in the U.K., and Peter Hitchens reviews them for Compact magazine. He was thrilled with them, and based on his previous commentary on films such as Never Look Away and Ida, I’m quite sure I will share his enthusiasm.
The two films, which are really one, make his defiant awkwardness very plain. The first, De Gaulle: Liberté, and the second, De Gaulle: Résistance, both show us the General outplaying Churchill and Roosevelt in the three-dimensional chess of wartime diplomacy. He is also seen neatly derailing his American-backed rival, Henri Giraud, who never realizes what has hit him. In a few brief moments we notice that he is secretly amused by the game he is playing, in which he well knows, as he once said, “There is no action in which the devil has no part.” The future French president’s personal life is almost entirely excluded. Once, for a moment, we glimpse through a windowpane his beloved daughter Anne, born with Down’s syndrome and probably the deepest passion of his life. His acerbic, courageous wife Yvonne, possibly the only adult person not overborne by him, is also briefly seen. Winston Churchill is for once depicted as a whole man, dangerous and sometimes wrong, rather than as the storybook hero he was not. He is also revealed, and this is true, as understanding just as much as de Gaulle did, that Britain was in danger of becoming an American vassal at the end of the war. Worse, he is shown as reluctantly preferring this fate to the sort of sovereignty de Gaulle, all too briefly, obtained.
There is currently no deal for distribution or streaming rights to these films in the United States. France, being France, takes its own time. There is a four-month period after theatrical release there before streaming in France. So these won’t hit French VOD until October. That’s probably the earliest date at which they would show up here, wherever they do.
