L'oeil de Vichy

Claude Lelouch weaves together Vichy and German newsreels to paint a portrait of how they wanted to portray the war to those under occupation.

Interesting look at how the Vichy government presented itself and the war to the people it was ruling over. More a footnote film rather than a full meal it moves along at a good clip and never gets boring. The film assumes you have some knowledge of the war since the narration of Brian Cox (in the English version) is geared to briefly putting what you are seeing in context of dates not for telling you anything particularly deep. The film is the march of the war across the movie screens of France, the deeper implications of what we are seeing is left for the passage of time and the viewer to fill in, we know how different things are because history has told us what really was going on. Some of the best bits are some weirdly chilling moments as the news reel narration is placed by Resistance broadcasts. In those moments time shifts and we are truly back in France during the Occupation. If there is any real flaw it's that we never see anything complete we see only clips. It would have been nice to see one complete newsreel so that we got a feel for how the news was presented.

Recommended for those with an interest in how the war was seen by a conquered people.