DE GAULLE AND FRANCE

“The researchers who traced down the great old black and white newsreels that give context and texture to De Gaulle and France deserve a medal or two.  Effectively juxtaposed with reminiscences of survivor players, they make for an absorbing account of the operatic career of a man who defied easy analysis.”  — New York Times Review, Walter Goodman. 

Dozens of programs made about Charles De Gaulle in France prior to this series, but someone at the French production company LMK Images thought it would be interesting to create a television series about the French war hero, statesman, and president from a non-French perspective.   De Gaulle vu d’Ailleurs  (De Gaulle Seen From Elsewhere) was the title of the series as it was broadcast on French television. Three foreign directors, Sue Williams (Canada), Tom Weidlinger (United States), and Christina Von Braun (Germany) were each invited to chronicle a portion of De Gaulle’s life and times.  In theory we were foreign auteurs, directors, free to manifest their own creative vision, encouraged to bring our own interpretation to French history.  

I wrote,  produced and directed the second hour of the series, The Return of the General, which focused on the bloody war for independence in the French colony of Algeria. France had already been defeated in Vietnam, known then as Indochina, and in the late 1950s held a tenacious grip on its last foothold in North Africa.  But it was a losing battle.  Around the world former colonies were fighting for and gaining independence.  De Gaulle understood that Algeria’s independence was a painful necessity. He stood firm against renegade generals in the French army who planned a putsch, complete with a  paratroop invasion of Paris.  

In making this documentary I was greatly aided by journalists from our production partner, the French newspaper Le Monde,  who paved the way for my interviews with the men of De Gaulle’s inner circle, a former French governor of Algeria, the far-right OAS (Organization of the Secret Army) which carried out bombings and assassinations in Paris and Algiers, and leaders of the FLN (National Liberation Front) which fought against the French army for Algerian independence.  Acts of terrorism were committed on both sides. 

In 1990 I  lived in Paris for a year while making the film.  While working on the project, I was surprised by how deep the scars of this war are imbedded in the French psyche.  The Algerian war seemed much more present in French collective consciousness than the more recent Vietnam war was in the United States.