{"id":878201,"date":"2026-04-07T15:35:20","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T15:35:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/878201\/"},"modified":"2026-04-07T15:35:20","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T15:35:20","slug":"gaumonts-rays-and-shadows-sparks-debate-over-frances-nazi-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/878201\/","title":{"rendered":"Gaumont’s ‘Rays and Shadows’ Sparks Debate Over France’s Nazi Past"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tHalf a century after Gaumont delivered France\u2019s first film on Nazi collaboration with Louis Malle\u2019s \u201cLacombe Lucien,\u201d the studio finds itself at the center of a full-blown national culture war with Xavier Giannoli<\/a>\u2019s polarizing \u201cRays and Shadows<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTackling the taboo topic of French collaboration with the Nazis during the German occupation of France during WWII, the three-hour, 15-minute period drama has already drawn more than 620,000 moviegoers since its March 18 release; a remarkable performance for a period film of that length in a theatrical landscape that\u2019s typically dominated by U.S. blockbusters, franchises and comedies. But its healthy box office performance has been matched by a fierce critical war that keeps growing nearly three weeks after its theatrical rollout and stretches across newspapers, TV, magazines and social media. The country\u2019s biggest outlets \u2014 including Le Monde and Lib\u00e9ration \u2014 have both published reviews and op-eds laying out the opposing camps.<\/p>\n

\n\tJean Dujardin, best known for his Oscar-winning turn in \u201cThe Artist,\u201d plays Jean Luchaire, a press baron who was initially a pacifist militant in 1930s and ultimately became an influential collaborationist and propagandist, which led to him to be sentenced to death after the war. Rather than a straight biopic, the film explores the moral compromises of French high society during that era through the rise and fall of Luchaire and his daughter Corinne (Nastya Golubeva), a promising young actress who followed him into Nazi circles and was eventually stripped of her civic, political and professional rights. The feature also depicts Luchaire\u2019s enduring friendship with Otto Abetz (August Diehl), who became the Reich ambassador in 1940.<\/p>\n

\n\tGaumont\u2019s biggest budget film (in the $30-million range) since the pandemic, \u201cRays and Shadows\u201d is bolstered by glossy props and a commanding performance by Dujardin. But the heated debate around the movie cuts along predictable fault lines: Is Giannoli indirectly relativizing collaboration in his attempt to bring some nuances (as suggested by the film title that refers to Victor Hugo\u2019s collection of poems published in 1840) and humanize his protagonists who seemingly helped the Nazis out of opportunism and vanity rather than ideology?<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cRays and Shadows\u201d adopts an immersive perspective, staying close to Luchaire and his daughter (so close that we see them coughing up blood\u00a0or sputum repeatedly), yet there is no direct depiction of antisemitic violence, deportations or even visual markers like the Jewish\u00a0badges.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn fact, the rare Jewish figures who appear in \u201cRays and Shadows\u201d are either saved by Luchaire and his daughter or portrayed as forgiving, like L\u00e9onide Moguy, the Ukrainian-Jewish director who turned Corinne into a \u201cFrench Garbo\u201d after casting her in \u201cPrison sans barreaux.\u201d The film does, however, find room to depict the brutality of Resistance fighters toward collaborators with Nazis.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe harshest critique of \u201cRays and Shadows\u201d came from Lib\u00e9ration\u2019s Luc Chessel, <\/a>who called it \u201ca disheartening biopic about the lives of scum\u201d and \u201ca masterclass in historical gaslighting,\u201d accusing Giannoli of being \u201cfascinated by its characters to the point of indulgence\u201d and producing \u201ca biopic of two collaborators during the Occupation that comes across as an XXL attempt at relativization, seeking to blend empathy and condemnation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHistorian B\u00e9n\u00e9dicte Vergez-Chaignon<\/a>, a specialist in the Second World War, went further in an op-ed published in Le Monde, calling out the film for historical inaccuracies and arguing that its chronological \u201cadjustments\u201d were designed to stir sympathy for the two protagonists. <\/p>\n

\n\tAmong her objections is a key scene depicting Luchaire\u2019s arrest by brutal Resistance members which she said is entirely fabricated. In reality, he and his daughter were arrested by American soldiers in Italy. \u201cThe Resistance is thus portrayed in its worst light,\u201d she wrote. More broadly, she took issue with the film\u2019s emotional strategy. \u201cThe clich\u00e9 that a character is never entirely good or entirely bad does not justify forcing the audience to feel compassion,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut \u201cRays and Shadows\u201d has been championed with as much passion in mainstream press. Alongside Vergez-Chaignon\u2019s op-ed, Le Monde ran a piece by film critic L\u00e9onard Haddad who defended the film, <\/a>arguing that Giannoli doesn\u2019t make excuses for collaborators \u2014 he lets the audience figure it out for themselves.<\/p>\n

\n\tHaddad noted that \u201cRays and Shadows\u201d truly immerses audiences in the world of collaborators, rather than taking the \u201cclinical\u201d approach of a film like \u201cAnatomy of a Fall,\u201d where \u201ceach scene serves to remind us that the Nazis were Nazis in every situation \u2014 whether at the dinner table, having tea or playing knucklebones with teeth.\u201d But a film like \u201cRays and Shadows\u201d that\u2019s \u201cproduced by Gaumont and features collaborators as protagonists,\u201d he acknowledged, is \u201ca much trickier matter.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tRight-wing editorialist Eug\u00e9nie Basti\u00e9, who writes for Le Figaro, praised Giannoli on X<\/a> for \u201cnot telling this story in black and white,\u201d and for depicting \u201cthe gradual slide of a pacifist toward compromise, then toward collaboration, driven by weakness, ambition and greed.\u201d Drawing a comparison with Malle\u2019s 1974 \u201cLacombe Lucien\u201d (itself deemed controversial at the time for its relatable portrayal of an ordinary young man joining a local Gestapo outpost in Southwestern France), Basti\u00e9 argued the film \u201cis neither complacent nor Manichean; it explores the roots of cowardice and indifference to evil.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile promoting \u201cRays and Shadows\u201d on French radio and TV, Giannoli fueled the controversy further by politicizing his film, drawing parallels between the antisemitism that infected the socialist circles of Luchaire and his close friend Abetz in the 1940s, and what he sees as a comparable trend within today\u2019s radical left party La France Insoumise. On the radio show \u201cFrance Inter<\/a>,\u201d he said the film \u201cshows how antisemitism has been used as a weapon of conquest. These elements are dangerous and toxic,\u201d taking a direct shot at party leader Jean-Luc M\u00e9lenchon.<\/p>\n

\n\tGiannoli also defended himself from detractors who said \u201cRays and Shadows\u201d is filled with historical inaccuracies, telling Le Monde<\/a> he \u201cdidn\u2019t want to approach this subject as a historian \u2026 but as a filmmaker.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe director did, however, consult with historians while developing the film. These three historians, Yves Pourcher,\u00a0Barbara Lambauer\u00a0and\u00a0C\u00e9dric M\u00e9letta, even co-signed an op-ed<\/a> published last week in the magazine Le Nouvel Obs, dubbing the criticism towards the film an \u201cunofficial \u2018Ideological Validation Commission.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe are three historians who have followed and supported the film\u2019s director as he gathered information and then wrote his screenplay. His passionate work led him to read almost everything related to his subject,\u201d the historians said collectively. \u201cXavier Giannoli drew heavily from all of this. But his work operates on an entirely different level \u2014 that of a creator capable of constructing a story with characters and actors who draw us into the tragedy of a France that was occupied, plundered and brutalized.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tUltimately, \u201cRays and Shadows,\u201d which is produced by Olivier Delbosc, will likely remain one of the most debated French movies of the year and one that Gaumont won\u2019t regret having made. Even if the studio won\u2019t break even on its investment with theatrical, Giannoli\u2019s film has a premium library value and is expected to have a robust life in ancillary markets.<\/p>\n

\n\tFollowing Gaumont with \u201cRays and Shadows\u201d and Studiocanal with Christophe Barratier\u2019s \u201cThe Children of the Resistance\u201d released in February, Path\u00e9 and TF1 Studios will next tackle France\u2019s wartime past in Antonin Baudry\u2019s two-part saga \u201cDe Gaulle<\/a>,\u201d and \u201cMoulin,\u201d a film about French Resistance hero Jean Moulin, directed by L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Nemes (\u201cSon of Saul\u201d), respectively. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Half a century after Gaumont delivered France\u2019s first film on Nazi collaboration with Louis Malle\u2019s \u201cLacombe Lucien,\u201d the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":878202,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5309],"tags":[2000,299,36,248756,248757],"class_list":["post-878201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-france","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-france","tag-rays-and-shadows","tag-xavier-giannoli"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116364163671790688","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=878201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878201\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/878202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=878201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=878201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=878201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}