{"id":527593,"date":"2026-04-12T23:21:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-12T23:21:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/527593\/"},"modified":"2026-04-12T23:21:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-12T23:21:11","slug":"dont-mention-that-bit-of-the-war-dujardin-film-divides-france","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/527593\/","title":{"rendered":"Don\u2019t mention (that bit of) the war: Dujardin film divides France"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new film starring the Oscar winner Jean Dujardin as a Nazi collaborator has reopened one of France\u2019s most enduring historical wounds: its Vichy past.<\/p>\n

The historical drama, Les Rayons et les Ombres (Rays and Shadows), tells the true story of a left-wing journalist\u2019s journey from pacifism to collaboration as a mouthpiece for Nazi propaganda.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The director Xavier Giannoli said the film aims to understand what motivated Jean Luchaire, who was executed in 1946, without judging or excusing his actions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Told from the perspective of his devoted daughter Corinne, it has ignited a row that lays bare France\u2019s unfinished reckoning with collaboration and a political divide that persists today.<\/p>\n

\"AdolfAdolf Hitler in front of the Eiffel Tower in June 1940Corbis \/Getty<\/p>\n

Left-wingers have accused Giannoli of \u201chumanising\u201d collaborators and \u201cdehumanising\u201d the French Resistance. Centrists and conservatives, however, have praised it as a masterpiece of historical nuance.<\/p>\n

Dujardin, who won an Oscar for his role in the 2011 film The Artist, plays Luchaire with his customary charm and bonhomie. The journalist is portrayed not as a diehard ideologue but a champagne-guzzling socialite whose fecklessness leads him to embrace the evil of the Nazi killing machine.<\/p>\n

Lib\u00e9ration, the left-wing newspaper, described the film as \u201ca masterclass of historical gaslighting\u201d.\u00a0The paper said it promoted \u201cfascist alternative history\u201d at a time when nationalist populism is on the rise and Marine Le Pen\u2019s prot\u00e9g\u00e9 Jordan Bardella is leading the polls for next year\u2019s presidential election.<\/p>\n

\"NastyaNastya Golubeva Carax as Corinne <\/p>\n

\"CorinneCorinne and her father Jean Luchaire with a US soldier in Merano, Italy, 1945Keystone-France\/Gamma-Keystone\/Getty<\/p>\n

L\u2019Humanit\u00e9, the Communist Party paper, condemned the film as a \u201cdangerous rewrite\u201d of history. \u201cThe film depicts some collaborators, especially Jean and Corinne Luchaire, as people caught up in the current of history,\u201d the paper said. \u201cThis choice partly exonerates their actions. Resistance fighters are shown as vicious and opportunistic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Giannoli denied that the film defended collaboration. \u201cThere is no question of rehabilitating collaborators. It seeks to restore the humanity of these figures who were thrown into this moment of history.\u201d<\/p>\n

The topic of collaboration became a postwar taboo in France as Charles de Gaulle constructed the myth of \u201cr\u00e9sistancialisme\u201d, a proud narrative that France largely liberated itself from the Nazis, which he crafted to unite a fractured nation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When the director Louis Malle dared to depict the ambiguities of collaboration in his 1974 film Lacombe, Lucien, the ensuing torrent of condemnation forced him into temporary exile in the United States.<\/p>\n

Anticipating a similar critical backlash against his film, Giannoli painstakingly checked the facts with Pascal Ory, a historian of the period, \u201cbecause nobody would forgive me if I told just one lie\u201d. The film-maker said Ory warned him that \u201cneither would anybody forgive me if I told the truth\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Le Figaro, the conservative newspaper, commented: \u201cIt is indeed the historical truth emerging from this film that disturbs its denigrators.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"JeanJean Luchaire at his trial Keystone-France\/Gamma-Keystone\/Gettyimages<\/p>\n

Its title is borrowed from Victor Hugo\u2019s 1840 poetry collection, Les Rayons et les Ombres, in which he contended that there is good and evil in everyone.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery man on earth has two faces, good and evil. To blame everything is to understand nothing,\u201d Hugo wrote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new film starring the Oscar winner Jean Dujardin as a Nazi collaborator has reopened one of France\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":527594,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-527593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=527593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527593\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/527594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=527593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=527593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=527593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}