Cinema: the Second World War from all angles at the Cannes Film Festival

Screened Wednesday in competition, “Our Salvation” by Emmanuel Marre is the second film this year after “Les Rayons et les ombres”, released in March, to tell the war from the point of view of collaboration.

No war scenes or heroic resistance fighters in this feature film, which portrays an official of the Vichy regime based in Limoges, an ordinary little cog in a monstrous machine.

Emmanuel Marre actually tells the story of his great-grandfather Henri Marre (played by Swann Arlaud), author of a book mixing managerial thought and patriotism entitled “Our Salvation”, which he tried to promote during the Vichy period. To inform the story, he relied on the correspondence between his grandfather and his wife.

“Reading these letters (…) I said to myself ‘wouldn’t it be interesting to tell the story of someone who is in the background'”, Emmanuel Marre explains to AFP.

Rather than lingering on the most spectacular figures of collaboration – these “great collaborators” played by Jean Luchaire in “Les Rayons et les ombres”, press boss shot at the Liberation – the director chooses to focus on an ordinary civil servant, one of these thousands of anonymous people who have continued to work under Vichy.

– Painful memory –

Emmanuel Marre says he remembers a history class at college “where the teacher asked us + are there any of you who have resistant grandparents? + The vast majority raised their hands”.

“I said to myself, something is wrong,” he remembers. “Why does everyone need to call themselves resistant? Resistance, heroism, is really not within everyone’s reach.” The vast majority of people at the time did nothing because they were unaware of the scale of the crimes committed, insists the filmmaker.

The film, which comes out on September 30, could relaunch the debate on the memory of the collaboration, after “Les Rayons et les ombres” released in March and judged by some, notably on the left, to be complacent with the figure of Jean Luchaire.

The representation of collaboration in cinema “is obviously much more dissensual than that of the Resistance”, explains historian Sylvie Lindeperg.

“The Vichy syndrome (historical expression designating the difficulty in facing a shameful past) has persisted for a long time,” underlines historian and director Christian Delage.

However, it confirms the renewed interest of cinema in the Second World War. “The war is upon us. It is the end of what the construction of post-war peace was” and the filmmakers question the origins of the international order now threatened, he continues.

– Not brave –

Emmanuel Marre’s film is the only one at Cannes to adopt a radical point of view, showing “human beings not necessarily courageous” during the war, according to the director.

Another film on the war, screened on Wednesday out of competition, the first part of the biopic on General De Gaulle is a large production of classic style retracing the life of the leader of Free France during the five years of war.

“Moulin”, about the last days of the leader of the Resistance, is a reminder of the “price to pay for freedom”, according to its director Laszlo Nemes. Finally, Daniel Auteuil recounts the fate of a Vichy official who saved Jews in “The Third Night”, presented at Cannes Premiere.

With “Our Salvation”, “we are not trying to distribute good and bad points, to say here are the bad guys, here are the good guys”, says Swann Arlaud.

The film is an invitation to look at “how political movements can play on our intimate neuroses and tip us over (…) by tickling our failures, our resentments”, explains Emmanuel Marre.

Source: AFP