I saw it today, and I liked it, yes the purists will find things that they can complain about, but it is a film for more than just the WW2 buff, otherwise about a dozen or so will ever go to see it. Forget the critics, and see it for yourself, and make your own mind up, certainly worth the price of admission, and glad that there are still some who are willing to make a decent go of putting something like this together....
Here is another review where the French are now upset about not getting enough on screen time.... (and I read of another where one critic was crying over not enough women in the film...
)
-Bob
French furious at being written out of Dunkirk film epic
Charles Bremner, Paris Tom Parfitt, Moscow | Oliver Moody
July 22 2017, 12:00am, The Times
Christopher Nolan’s film has been accused of diminishing the role of France’s troopsMelinda Sue Gordon
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The film Dunkirk is under attack in France for glorifying British prowess while neglecting French troops whose sacrifice made the epic evacuation possible.
Historians and critics have voiced annoyance over what they see as Christopher Nolan’s rewriting of the defeat of Allied forces in which 30,000 French troops held off Nazi divisions near Lille in the late spring of 1940 to protect Operation Dynamo in the Channel.
In Russia, which had a non-aggression pact with Hitler at the time, the film has been mocked as a celebration of British cowardice.
The Dunkirk retreat is not taught in schools in France and is largely unknown, so reviewers there are recounting the event and explaining its role in the modern British mentality through the prism of Brexit.
The newspaper Libération called Dunkirk a “founding episode in European history” adding: “The Dunkirk spirit has lived on since the war as a strong marker of the English patriotic psyche, the feeling that in coming home, escaping the bad fates of the continent, English soldiers could reconquer their strength to resist.”
The main complaint springs from the brushing out of the French role in Nolan’s film, except for a few brief scenes. “This vibrant homage to the British Army and people avoids the suffering of the French soldiers who, after protecting the British retreat, watched the last boats sail away. They were heading for the night of the occupation,” said Les Echos, a business newspaper.
The film stars Sir Kenneth Branagh
As Dunkirk opened in France on Wednesday, Dominique Lormier, a Second World War historian, said: “Anglo-Saxon history has an unfortunate habit of playing up the armed feats of the British and passing those of the French army in silence.”
Operation Dynamo succeeded “thanks to the sacrifice of the French army which prevented 200,000 enemy soldiers penetrating the pocket of Allied resistance at Dunkirk and decimating the British Army”, he told the Huffington Post’s French site.
The harshest review came from Le Monde, which talked of the “scathing rudeness, deplorable indifference” of Nolan towards France.
Harry Styles, Aneurin Barnard and Fionn Whitehead await rescue in Christopher Nolan’s retelling of DunkirkRex Features
Only a dozen seconds were devoted to a group of French soldiers defending the city of Lille and a few more to a French soldier disguised as British trying to flee, wrote Jacques Mandelbaum, Le Monde’s critic. “Where in the film are the 120,000 French soldiers who were also evacuated from Dunkirk? Where are the 40,000 who sacrificed themselves to defend the city against a superior enemy in weaponry and numbers?”
Historians recall that Winston Churchill and his commanders lavished praise on the French. Churchill wrote afterwards that “the heroic resistance of the French army saved the British and allowed them to continue the war”.
Some of the French troops on the beach at Dunkirk were also taken back to EnglandTimes Newspapers Ltd
French propaganda under the Vichy puppet regime ensured that the Channel evacuation became largely unknown, Patrick Oddone, head of the Dunkirk Society of History and Archeology, said. “The operation has disappeared from French school books because the spirit of Vichy still suffuses these events,” he said. “You could find propaganda pictures with English soldiers using their rifle butts to hit French soldiers trying to scramble aboard boats. These images remained in the collective French memory.” French Anglophobia was still fed by the idea “that the English abandoned the French”, he added.
British historians said film-makers had a right to interpret history. Sir Max Hastings, a Churchill biographer, said: “Nolan’s film is as shamelessly British as many of Steven Spielberg’s are shamelessly American. The French will have to make their own film if they want their national story properly told.”
Here is another review where the French are now upset about not getting enough on screen time.... (and I read of another where one critic was crying over not enough women in the film...
)-Bob
French furious at being written out of Dunkirk film epic
Charles Bremner, Paris Tom Parfitt, Moscow | Oliver Moody
July 22 2017, 12:00am, The Times
Christopher Nolan’s film has been accused of diminishing the role of France’s troopsMelinda Sue Gordon
Share
Save
The film Dunkirk is under attack in France for glorifying British prowess while neglecting French troops whose sacrifice made the epic evacuation possible.
Historians and critics have voiced annoyance over what they see as Christopher Nolan’s rewriting of the defeat of Allied forces in which 30,000 French troops held off Nazi divisions near Lille in the late spring of 1940 to protect Operation Dynamo in the Channel.
In Russia, which had a non-aggression pact with Hitler at the time, the film has been mocked as a celebration of British cowardice.
The Dunkirk retreat is not taught in schools in France and is largely unknown, so reviewers there are recounting the event and explaining its role in the modern British mentality through the prism of Brexit.
The newspaper Libération called Dunkirk a “founding episode in European history” adding: “The Dunkirk spirit has lived on since the war as a strong marker of the English patriotic psyche, the feeling that in coming home, escaping the bad fates of the continent, English soldiers could reconquer their strength to resist.”
The main complaint springs from the brushing out of the French role in Nolan’s film, except for a few brief scenes. “This vibrant homage to the British Army and people avoids the suffering of the French soldiers who, after protecting the British retreat, watched the last boats sail away. They were heading for the night of the occupation,” said Les Echos, a business newspaper.
The film stars Sir Kenneth Branagh
As Dunkirk opened in France on Wednesday, Dominique Lormier, a Second World War historian, said: “Anglo-Saxon history has an unfortunate habit of playing up the armed feats of the British and passing those of the French army in silence.”
Operation Dynamo succeeded “thanks to the sacrifice of the French army which prevented 200,000 enemy soldiers penetrating the pocket of Allied resistance at Dunkirk and decimating the British Army”, he told the Huffington Post’s French site.
The harshest review came from Le Monde, which talked of the “scathing rudeness, deplorable indifference” of Nolan towards France.
Harry Styles, Aneurin Barnard and Fionn Whitehead await rescue in Christopher Nolan’s retelling of DunkirkRex Features
Only a dozen seconds were devoted to a group of French soldiers defending the city of Lille and a few more to a French soldier disguised as British trying to flee, wrote Jacques Mandelbaum, Le Monde’s critic. “Where in the film are the 120,000 French soldiers who were also evacuated from Dunkirk? Where are the 40,000 who sacrificed themselves to defend the city against a superior enemy in weaponry and numbers?”
Historians recall that Winston Churchill and his commanders lavished praise on the French. Churchill wrote afterwards that “the heroic resistance of the French army saved the British and allowed them to continue the war”.
Some of the French troops on the beach at Dunkirk were also taken back to EnglandTimes Newspapers Ltd
French propaganda under the Vichy puppet regime ensured that the Channel evacuation became largely unknown, Patrick Oddone, head of the Dunkirk Society of History and Archeology, said. “The operation has disappeared from French school books because the spirit of Vichy still suffuses these events,” he said. “You could find propaganda pictures with English soldiers using their rifle butts to hit French soldiers trying to scramble aboard boats. These images remained in the collective French memory.” French Anglophobia was still fed by the idea “that the English abandoned the French”, he added.
British historians said film-makers had a right to interpret history. Sir Max Hastings, a Churchill biographer, said: “Nolan’s film is as shamelessly British as many of Steven Spielberg’s are shamelessly American. The French will have to make their own film if they want their national story properly told.”
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