Surviving French resistance fighters says the film, starring Sophie Marceau (right), ignores their patriotism
Heroines of the French resistance have taken issue with a new film starring Sophie Marceau that was supposed to honour their fight against the Nazis.
Les Femmes de l’Ombre (women of the shadows) had attracted enormous media attention in France and won plaudits from film critics for finally recognising the role of women resistance fighters, who had been largely ignored for over 60 years.
Now French recruits of the Special Operations Executive, set up in 1940 by Winston Churchill, say the filmmakers have dishonoured their fallen comrades by suggesting that women were coerced into joining the resistance.
"This film is worse than if they had done nothing," former resistance member Denise Vernay, 83, told The Sunday Telegraph. "I am very sorry that it was made at all, especially at a time when those generations watching it who did not know the war can no longer differentiate between the reality of our commitment and these ridiculous women portrayed in the film.
"Women joined the Resistance out of patriotism, a conviction which appears nowhere in this film," she said.
Ms Vernay joined the resistance as a schoolgirl distributing subversive tracts and copying BBC news bulletins onto the school blackboard.
By 1943 she was national liaison agent for the resistance around Lyon.
Arrested with a British radio transmitter, she was tortured by the Gestapo before being deported to Ravensbruk concentration camp. Her family had already been sent to Auschwitz.
In the film, Ms Marceau leads a five-woman commando team back into France to rescue a wounded British agent held by the Gestapo.
One of her team, played by Gerard Depardieu’s daughter Julie, is a hardened prostitute on death row who is spared execution after she promises to join.
The SOE blackmails another woman into enlisting by threatening to disclose her affair with a Nazi officer.
"It is an injury to them and a betrayal of their memory to say they were recruited by blackmail, lies and pardons," Ms Vernay wrote in Paris Match with Michele Agniel, another resistance member who survived Ravensbruk. "Such recruitment, carried out in haste, is implausible, even impossible."
However, many critics and historians - and other resistance veterans - have welcomed the film.
"Les Femmes de l’Ombre has at least this great merit: it reminds us that the resistance was not only the affair of men," wrote Le Point’s film critic Francois-Guillaume Lorrain.
After the liberation only six female members of the resistance were decorated by General Charles de Gaulle, compared to 1,036 men who were honoured for their bravery.
Their low profile was partly a reflection of less egalitarian times (women were unable to vote in France until 1944) and partly the consequence of De Gaulle’s feud with Churchill.
Although the exact number of women who participated in the resistance is unknown, historians believe that hundreds worked tirelessly in the shadows, risking their lives to free their country.
Lise Villameur, the inspiration for the film, was one of the few to be recognised. She was made a Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur and awarded the Croix de Guerre avec palme. In Britain she was appointed MBE.
She was one of the first two women to be dropped by SOE behind German lines in France in 1942, where she formed a new network to provide a secure centre for agents in need of help and information.
The film’s director, Jean-Paul Salomé, said he first thought about making the film after reading her obituary in a British newspaper in 2004.
"These women put their lives in danger, they were equally as committed as the men, but out of humility they never drew any profit from their heroism," he said. "I wanted to pay them homage."
Ms Vernay joined the resistance as a schoolgirl distributing subversive tracts and copying BBC news bulletins onto the school blackboard.
By 1943 she was national liaison agent for the resistance around Lyon.
Arrested with a British radio transmitter, she was tortured by the Gestapo before being deported to Ravensbruk concentration camp. Her family had already been sent to Auschwitz.
In the film, Ms Marceau leads a five-woman commando team back into France to rescue a wounded British agent held by the Gestapo.
One of her team, played by Gerard Depardieu’s daughter Julie, is a hardened prostitute on death row who is spared execution after she promises to join.
The SOE blackmails another woman into enlisting by threatening to disclose her affair with a Nazi officer.
"It is an injury to them and a betrayal of their memory to say they were recruited by blackmail, lies and pardons," Ms Vernay wrote in Paris Match with Michele Agniel, another resistance member who survived Ravensbruk. "Such recruitment, carried out in haste, is implausible, even impossible."
However, many critics and historians - and other resistance veterans - have welcomed the film.
"Les Femmes de l’Ombre has at least this great merit: it reminds us that the resistance was not only the affair of men," wrote Le Point’s film critic Francois-Guillaume Lorrain.
After the liberation only six female members of the resistance were decorated by General Charles de Gaulle, compared to 1,036 men who were honoured for their bravery.
Their low profile was partly a reflection of less egalitarian times (women were unable to vote in France until 1944) and partly the consequence of De Gaulle’s feud with Churchill.
Although the exact number of women who participated in the resistance is unknown, historians believe that hundreds worked tirelessly in the shadows, risking their lives to free their country.
Lise Villameur, the inspiration for the film, was one of the few to be recognised. She was made a Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur and awarded the Croix de Guerre avec palme. In Britain she was appointed MBE.
She was one of the first two women to be dropped by SOE behind German lines in France in 1942, where she formed a new network to provide a secure centre for agents in need of help and information.
The film’s director, Jean-Paul Salomé, said he first thought about making the film after reading her obituary in a British newspaper in 2004.
"These women put their lives in danger, they were equally as committed as the men, but out of humility they never drew any profit from their heroism," he said. "I wanted to pay them homage."
