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Nazi-occupied France, 16 July 1942. The French police arrest 13,152 Jewish residents of Paris and hold them at the Vélodrome d’Hiver before facilitating their deportation to extermination camps, over two-thirds to Auschwitz. Not until 1995, on the fifty-third anniversary of the Vél’ d’Hiv roundup, was the French authorities’ complicity in this event officially acknowledged in a speech by newly elected president Jacques Chirac: ‘France, land of the Enlightenment and of Human Rights … France, on that day, committed an irreparable act.’ Reframing remembrance: Contemporary French cinema and the Second World War argues that Chirac’s speech marked a shift in the way French society, and its filmmakers, commemorated the Second World War. By following Henry Rousso’s model (outlined in Le syndrome de Vichy), viewing historical films as vectors of memory, this book analyses cinematic representations of the Occupation as expressions of commemoration. It charts the evolution of Second World War stories told on French screens and argues that more recent films are concerned with the collective experience of the Occupation, the pedagogical responsibility of historical films and with adopting a self-reflective approach to their narrative structures. With its catalogue-like structure and clear thematic analysis of key concepts such as resistance, collaboration and legacy, Reframing remembrance is an informative and accessible investigation into French cinema and its treatment of the Second World War.
's Second World War commemorative trajectory would take place in September 2019, that of Jacques Chirac himself. Just like Pisar, Wiesel and Veil before him, Chirac's legacy as a catalyst for the devoir de mémoire was brought to the fore in many tributes. Many obituaries cited his Vél’ d’Hiv speech as a key moment not only for his political career but for French history. Haïm Korsia, France's grand rabbi, praised Chirac's curiosité pour le monde, sa connaissance du judaïsme et son goût pour l
’ ( 2005 : 39). In order to consolidate a sense of French national identity, a myth was established to reinforce France's reputation as a collective, unalloyed nation of resistance fighters. This myth was subsequently cemented in numerous French films representing the period. The key focus of this book is to discuss the function of historical films as acts of commemoration and explore how French films about the Second World War made between 1995 and 2015, following a speech delivered by newly elected President Jacques Chirac, shifted the way the Occupation was
a possibility in France, despite Jacques Chirac’s ongoing presidency. Twelve years later, the right-wing former Minister of the Interior Nicolas Sarkozy was elected to the Elysée, a testament to the country’s apparent acceptance of the triumph of a rampant individualistic neo-liberalism. Even if Ozon publicly spoke of the danger posed to the country by Sarkozy, over the period in which the climate for Sarkozy
, a number of filmmakers tried to combat such discourses, as in the portemanteau anti-racist film Pas d ’ histoire! Douze films sur le racisme au quotidien (2001), Charef’s Marie-Line (2000), and films such as Bernard Dumont’s Ligne 208 (2001) and Gilles de Maistre’s Féroce (2002), which address critically the fascination of the extreme Right. 3 However, although Le Pen was defeated by Jacques Chirac in the second round of the presidential elections
, ‘The world is yours’ (‘Le monde est à vous’) in favour of ‘The world is ours’ (‘Le monde est à nous’) is ironic rather than affirmative or hopeful. La Haine’s success is in large measure due to its timing. As Gérard Lefort put it, ‘it hits the right spot in a country still groggy after the coronation of Jacques Chirac’ (Reader 1995 : 14), while Time Out’s critic referred to the ‘liberating sense of a political sore finally finding legitimate filmic
informed American politics throughout the same period that is both echoed and contested by the featured rap/metal artists. While the book is subdivided into eleven chapters, they can be clustered into the following broad sections. Supercapitalism It is the system of supercapitalism that is the immanent economic modality of an unmatched superpower, what Jacques Chirac called the hyperpuissance of America, that provides both the focus and the context for this book on American negativity and rap/metal. In supercapitalism, economy is an expression of war just as war is a
tough immigration policies. The return of the Right to power in 1993, followed by Jacques Chirac’s election as president in 1995, saw the introduction of a series of laws restricting the rights of immigrants in France, notably the Méhaignerie and Pasqua laws of 1993 and the Debré law of 1997, which were not overturned when Lionel Jospin and the Left came to power in 1998. The restriction of access to French nationality for the French-born children of foreign
any event the obvious fact that the political terms ‘left’ and ‘right’ discussed above are in large measure nation-specific. Almost the entire political landscape in France tilts ‘left’, if by this is meant, in a democratic context, ‘characteristic of greater state intervention’, in all matters: political, economic, social, cultural. Thus the former French President Jacques Chirac, while commonly described by the British media as centre-right, could certainly be seen as left-leaning in his opposition to free-market reforms; when in office he went on record by
television, and Guédiguian and his actors were suddenly appearing on award shows and being interviewed in media outlets. To some degree, the film’s success can be attributed to a shifting political environment, two years into Jacques Chirac’s first term, in which Guédiguian’s message of philia and micro-revolution touched a nerve. Chirac won that election in part by exploiting an ambiguous 60 60 Robert Guédiguian discourse on ‘la fracture sociale’ (‘social fracture’), which led, after his election, to reinforcement of the anti-immigration Pasqua laws with the Debré