Unveiled at the Cannes Film Festival, L’âge de ironfirst part of the diptychThe Battle of Gaulle, one of the biggest French productions in history (75 million euros!), arrives in theaters this Wednesday, June 3.
De Gaulle on screen, it is clear, is not Winston Churchill: if the latter has often been played in films, television films and Anglo-Saxon series, and beautifully, the general has long been confined (but anything but reduced) in French cinema to archives, or an iconized, even deified, silhouette. No doubt because his shadow, not to mention his influence, has long been very present, even overwhelming… Things have evolved over the past twenty years: Bernard Farcy, Pierre Vernier and Michel Vuillermoz have successively interpreted him for the small screen, and Lambert Wilson, for the big one. But there either, we’re not going to lie, nothing very glorious. The diptych The Battle of Gaulle of which the first part L’Age de fer comes out on June 3 and the second I write your nameon July 3, could finally change the situation!
Pathé production with a colossal budget (74 million euros, not counting various overruns) which required 148 days of filming and 6,000 extras, The Battle of Gaulle is the work of Antonin Braudy. A “serious client”: polytechnician, project manager in the office of a certain Dominique de Villepin, cultural advisor, diplomat, ambassador, screenwriter of Quai d’Orsay, the comic strip and the film inspired by his experience at the Ministry of Affairs foreigners, both amazing, and finally director of the thrilling submarine film The wolf’s song in 2019.
A focus on four years
Interested since adolescence by the figure of Charles de Gaulle, Antonin Braudy discovered him in a new light thanks to De Gaulle, a certain idea of Francethe biography of Julian T. Jackson. “Perhaps because the author was English and his book escaped the “French national monument” category. he explains in the press kit. Written with his partner Bérénice Vila, and the constant gaze of the British historian, his screenplay focuses on the period 1940-1944 alone. “It’s de Gaulle’s period that interests me. It could be summed up as “the power of imagination†. You had to be a little special, a little lit, to find yourself in Churchill’s office the day after France’s capitulation.”
To embody Charles de Gaulle, Antonin Braudy made a bold choice based on a conviction explained to our colleagues at the magazine Premierein May issue 573: “The essence of the character is more important than the appearance.” Obviously, Simon Abkarian managed to achieve it: former pillar of Ariane Mnouchkine’s Théâtre du Soleil, this intense and experienced actor who, in his life, experienced exile twice (Armenia and Lebanon), stood out in very varied films such as Everyone is looking for their cat, Aram, I saw Ben Barka killed, The army of crime, The trial of Viviane Amsalem or the series Kaboul kitchen.
Those who were able to see The Battle of Gaulle: the Iron Age out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival, all praised the performance of Simon Abkarian, ultra charismatic, and the vast majority of critics, with usually opposing opinions (gender Libération et Le Figarofor example) were carried away by the singularity, the efficiency and even the virtuosity of this French blockbuster, never hagiographic and very spectacular. Arrival in the theater scheduled for Wednesday. We are sure to answer the call!
