Le grand Charles

This feature tracks Charles De Gaulle's career from 1939 to 1959, mixing fiction and archives. It gives an overall interpretation of his personality, his political tricks, and of his intimacy, especially with his family (wife and children). On obviously a not easy subject, Bernard Stora managed to make a credible feature. Bernard Farcy, not trying to imitate the "great man", gives an honest acting. But, strangely enough, the best characters (and very close to the originals) are in the second roles, especially Churchill and Malraux. On the negative side, the choice of shooting fiction on video (HD) does not seem the best choice, especially because it does not match with archive footage; besides, fiction images are very ugly compared to archive images.

A docu-fiction which aimed to show General's De Gaulle intimate life more than his well know acts of war. So, the most important parts of his history are not detailed. Be sure this is not a documentary. It's more than that.

Bernard Farcy, as he later told, tried not to imitate the general. It was a good idea. The result is so good that sometime, you don't even care if Farcy is not a perfect double of De Gaulle (his size help anyway). The older De Gaulle is, the better Farcy plays. The second roles are performed as well especially Churchill, Raynaud, Malraux & Yvonne De Gaulle. The mix between archives and video is quite well done. The best parts remains the famous words he said and his habits. A few mistakes were made but can be easily explained. In the few war scenes reconstitution, it could really have been better made but let's remind this was made for TV (OK OK, band of brothers too...)

More than a documentary, it's a life lesson.

Behind the Great man that De Gaulle was, you have a man, with its own doubts, hopes and disillusion. If you have read De Gaulle's "Memories" or Pompidou "To establish a truth", you will find a great consistency between the movie and the real story.

Besides, alternating real archives footage of De Gaulle with sequences of the film provides an anchor with the historical events that so many films overlook(see for example the stupid film on Pompidou released in 2011 where he is portrayed as an incapacitated & diseased man).

You may be disappointed not to find the classic Hollywood romance and distortion of the real facts to make it "more romantic-like" as Georges Lucas quotes it. But this is neither a movie neither a fiction: it is History.

De Gaulle is also superbly interpreted by Bernard Farcy, whose performance is outstanding and quite surprising as he is far from his traditional repertoire.