How refreshing to see a film that portrays Churchill as the flawed and uncertain man he really was (even if it was made by the French): PETER HITCHENS
In his Daily Mail column, Peter Hitchens praises the new French film "De Gaulle: Resistance" for depicting Winston Churchill as a flawed, uncertain figure rather than the sanitised, heroic caricature common in modern British films. He argues that such honest portrayals better explain why Churchill was distrusted by King George VI, disliked by much of his own party, and voted out of office in 1945, since truly great men are often difficult, unlikeable and sometimes wrong rather than infallible.
Sir Simon Russell Beale plays Churchill as tricky, wavering and occasionally humiliated by the Americans, speaking deliberately poor French, while French-Armenian actor Simon Abkarian portrays a 6ft 5in Charles de Gaulle. Hitchens notes the film, based on a biography by British historian Julian Jackson, is unusually sympathetic to de Gaulle, showing his difficult wartime relationship with Britain after he fled to London in June 1940, and argues de Gaulle may have been an even greater leader than Churchill given he started with nothing.
- Hitchens praises French film "De Gaulle: Resistance" for realistic Churchill portrayal
- Simon Russell Beale plays a flawed, wavering Churchill, not a caricatured hero
- Film based on Julian Jackson's biography, sympathetic to de Gaulle's wartime struggles
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Churchill's wartime leadership of Britain is widely seen in this country as heroic, but historians have long noted he was a divisive figure: distrusted by King George VI, unpopular with parts of his own Conservative Party, and turfed out of office in the 1945 general election just after the war was won. Charles de Gaulle was the French general who refused to accept France's surrender to Germany in 1940, fled to London, and led the Free French resistance movement from exile, often clashing with Churchill and the British and American governments over France's status and future.
The new French film "De Gaulle: Resistance", based on a biography by the British historian Julian Jackson, dramatises this wartime relationship. It casts Sir Simon Russell Beale as a flawed, wavering Churchill and the French-Armenian actor Simon Abkarian as de Gaulle, and has drawn attention in Britain for departing from the more flattering image of Churchill common in British films and popular memory.
Peter Hitchens is a longstanding Daily Mail columnist known for challenging conventional and patriotic narratives about British history. His column on this film forms part of a broader, ongoing debate about how Churchill should be remembered and how his reputation compares with that of other wartime leaders such as de Gaulle.
Both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
Advocates of warts-and-all portrayals argue that reducing Churchill to a flawless national icon does history a disservice, flattening a genuinely complex man into propaganda. They contend that showing his doubts, failures and unpopularity – including his rejection by voters in 1945 and mistrust from colleagues and the King – actually makes his eventual achievements more remarkable, not less, and that mature nations should be confident enough to examine their heroes honestly rather than shielding them from scrutiny. They also welcome a fuller, more generous account of de Gaulle, seeing it as a corrective to insular narratives that downplay allies who suffered greater humiliation and started with far less.
The case against
Others worry that stripping away the heroic framing, particularly in a foreign production, risks under-crediting a leader whose resolve at Britain's most perilous hour is not myth but hard-won historical fact, and that emphasising his flaws can shade into diminishing what set him apart. They argue that some simplification in popular culture is legitimate and even necessary, since national stories perform a unifying function, and that a French retelling foregrounding de Gaulle's stature may reflect understandable national pride rather than dispassionate history, meaning Churchill's difficulties should be weighed alongside, not used to eclipse, his decisive leadership in 1940.