0:00:19 > 0:00:22No strings of onions.
0:00:24 > 0:00:26No Dordogne.
0:00:26 > 0:00:27No boule.
0:00:27 > 0:00:29No piaf.
0:00:29 > 0:00:32No, "Ooh, la, la."
0:00:32 > 0:00:34No Gallic shrugs.
0:00:34 > 0:00:36No street markets.
0:00:36 > 0:00:39No checked tablecloths.
0:00:46 > 0:00:48Valise.
0:01:04 > 0:01:07She told me this without rancour.
0:01:07 > 0:01:10It was merely what had happened to her.
0:01:10 > 0:01:14She hoped to die French.
0:01:14 > 0:01:15She did.
0:01:33 > 0:01:37"Every man has two countries, his own and France."
0:01:37 > 0:01:41This is habitually misattributed to Thomas Jefferson.
0:01:41 > 0:01:45It is in fact a line put into the mouth of Charlemagne
0:01:45 > 0:01:48in a late 19th-century play by Henri De Bornier,
0:01:48 > 0:01:54who was French, so it's a predictably chauvinistic boast,
0:01:54 > 0:01:57and not perhaps to be taken seriously.
0:01:57 > 0:02:02Say that in my case it's true, it became true.
0:02:02 > 0:02:04I frequently visited France as a child.
0:02:04 > 0:02:08Breton beaches, roast horse, cheap hotels,
0:02:08 > 0:02:13weird sojourns with my grandfather's elderly business friends
0:02:13 > 0:02:18supposedly scholastic exchanges and forgettable provincial towns.
0:02:18 > 0:02:22I was for ever hauling a huge suitcase.
0:02:22 > 0:02:25Une valise enorme.
0:02:28 > 0:02:31'Then came 1962.
0:02:31 > 0:02:34'That really was the year of le valise,
0:02:34 > 0:02:38'the year France became my second country. I was 15.
0:02:38 > 0:02:42'Early in April early one evening between dog and wolf...'
0:02:42 > 0:02:44HOWLING
0:02:47 > 0:02:51'I got on a ferry at Dover and got off in a war zone.'
0:02:51 > 0:02:52EXPLOSION
0:03:11 > 0:03:14'It was the shameful thrill of war's omnipresence
0:03:14 > 0:03:18'and its fearful randomness that made France my second country.
0:03:18 > 0:03:20'On paper, the war was over.
0:03:20 > 0:03:24'The Evian Accords had been signed a fortnight previously.
0:03:24 > 0:03:26'Algeria had got its independence.
0:03:26 > 0:03:29'For the OAS, the war was not over.
0:03:29 > 0:03:33'The armed faction of the millions of French citizens
0:03:33 > 0:03:35'who, betrayed the Evian Accords,
0:03:35 > 0:03:39'continued to plant bombs and attempt assassinations.'
0:03:39 > 0:03:40FRENCH-ALGERIAN VOCAL MUSIC
0:03:54 > 0:03:57Vallin, Eugene.
0:03:58 > 0:04:01'In the earliest years of the 20th century,
0:04:01 > 0:04:03'the furniture Eugene Vallin
0:04:03 > 0:04:06'made his first tentative steps in architecture.
0:04:08 > 0:04:11'Nossi was a celebrated craft centre.
0:04:11 > 0:04:17'Glassware, marketry, cabinet-making, ceramics, metalwork.
0:04:17 > 0:04:21'Nossi's Art Nouveau was not really that new.
0:04:21 > 0:04:26'Much of it was revivalism from of the Rococo and Baroque.
0:04:26 > 0:04:30'Art Nouveau mostly occurs in places touched by the Baroque.
0:04:30 > 0:04:33'It was covert revivalism.
0:04:33 > 0:04:38'These artists heeded Montaigne's council to the plagiarist...'
0:04:38 > 0:04:40"Behave like a horse thief.
0:04:40 > 0:04:42"Dye the tail and the mane
0:04:42 > 0:04:45"and sometimes put out the creature's eyes."
0:04:45 > 0:04:49'IE, cover your tracks.'
0:04:50 > 0:04:53For all its whimsy, Art Nouveau was political.
0:04:53 > 0:04:57The strain that developed in Nancy was in deliberate opposition
0:04:57 > 0:05:00to that of Metz and Strasbourg, then German cities
0:05:00 > 0:05:03whose recent buildings were in the German Jugenstihl.
0:05:05 > 0:05:08Nancy defined itself with its own version of Art Nouveau,
0:05:08 > 0:05:10just as many small countries,
0:05:10 > 0:05:14aspirantly autonomous regions and city states did -
0:05:14 > 0:05:17Riga, Liguria, Catalonia and so on.
0:05:17 > 0:05:22Nancy took as its model the English Arts and Crafts movement.
0:05:27 > 0:05:31Unlike the Arts and Crafts, it was not opposed to industrial processes,
0:05:31 > 0:05:36but it shared the conviction that a well turned door handle
0:05:36 > 0:05:39would make the world a better place.
0:05:39 > 0:05:42So it was the profusion of its enamel
0:05:42 > 0:05:44and the excellence of its stained glass that
0:05:44 > 0:05:48prevented the First World War and the blood bath at Verdun.
0:05:48 > 0:05:54Needless to say, it was the preferred style of the caviar left.
0:06:06 > 0:06:09Sebastien le Prestre Marquis de Vauban
0:06:09 > 0:06:13was an expert in porcine husbandry, an economist
0:06:13 > 0:06:16and the greatest of military engineers.
0:06:16 > 0:06:21He built or rebuilt some 300 fortresses on the country's borders,
0:06:21 > 0:06:24the country's ever expanding borders.
0:06:24 > 0:06:28The places where they are cited form a litany of belligerence.
0:06:28 > 0:06:32They are for ever associable with battles,
0:06:32 > 0:06:39sieges, evacuations, trenches, trench foot, shame
0:06:39 > 0:06:41victorious commemoration,
0:06:41 > 0:06:45mutilation, barracks, disease, humiliation,
0:06:45 > 0:06:47mass death.
0:06:57 > 0:07:00The hills south of Nancy which Vaudemont is perched on
0:07:00 > 0:07:03is holy, or mystical or spiritual,
0:07:03 > 0:07:06one of those superstitious things anyway.
0:07:06 > 0:07:11Rosmerta, the Gaulish god of fertility, a big girl,
0:07:11 > 0:07:15was honoured here in the 4th century BC.
0:07:15 > 0:07:18The Romans erected a temple to Mercury.
0:07:18 > 0:07:22The first Christian site was of the 5th century.
0:07:22 > 0:07:24The Basilica was built in the 1870s.
0:07:24 > 0:07:27Its tower has a Mary on top of it.
0:07:27 > 0:07:31She's 25 feet tall, another big girl.
0:07:31 > 0:07:33If she's capable of virgin birth,
0:07:33 > 0:07:37why should she not have an overeager pituitary gland?
0:07:45 > 0:07:48When Alsace and northern Lorraine were returned to France
0:07:48 > 0:07:50after the First World War,
0:07:50 > 0:07:54a folksy ceremony of reunification was held here.
0:07:56 > 0:07:59It was presided over by Maurice Barres.
0:07:59 > 0:08:05The hill was by then known as "La colline inspiree"
0:08:05 > 0:08:08after his novel of that name which is set here
0:08:08 > 0:08:13and which treats the tension between Catholicism and the nationalistic stirrings
0:08:13 > 0:08:18supposedly prompted by the animism of this place.
0:08:18 > 0:08:22The reason that this hill should have supernatural attributes
0:08:22 > 0:08:25and imaginary properties dumped on it is clear.
0:08:25 > 0:08:29It is the only hill for miles around.
0:08:29 > 0:08:33The topographically prodigious is routinely claimed for God
0:08:33 > 0:08:39when, in fact, it actually belongs to the marvels of geological happenstance.
0:08:42 > 0:08:46Barres was a politician, an eventually repentant anti-Semite,
0:08:46 > 0:08:52an unrepentant anti-Dreyfusard, a clubbable bigot.
0:08:52 > 0:08:54His life was irremediably coloured
0:08:54 > 0:08:58by the German seizure of Alsace and northern Lorraine
0:08:58 > 0:09:00when he was eight-years-old.
0:09:00 > 0:09:05He was a xenophobe, yet was steeped in German literature.
0:09:05 > 0:09:07He was a Lorraine supremacist
0:09:07 > 0:09:11who subscribed to a doctrine akin to "Blut und Boden".
0:09:29 > 0:09:33He believed that his native forests spoke to him.
0:09:33 > 0:09:36Much that he wrote was absolute tosh,
0:09:36 > 0:09:38but he wrote it captivatingly
0:09:38 > 0:09:42and he influenced not just the gullible but an entire generation.
0:09:43 > 0:09:48Vaudemont Sion was proclaimed the Sacred Hill of the nation,
0:09:48 > 0:09:51and Barres somehow persuaded France that Lorraine,
0:09:51 > 0:09:56despite being on its margins, was the country's heartland,
0:09:56 > 0:10:00its spiritual heartland - whatever that meant.
0:10:19 > 0:10:24The celebrity witch, Joan of Arc, also came from Lorraine.
0:10:24 > 0:10:26The month after she was canonised,
0:10:26 > 0:10:30the chamber of deputies voted in favour of Barres' plan
0:10:30 > 0:10:32that a national day should be devoted to her.
0:10:45 > 0:10:49Charles de Gaulle, whose idea of nationhood owed much to Barres,
0:10:49 > 0:10:52chose to live at Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises
0:10:52 > 0:10:55in Haute-Marne, on the edge of Lorraine.
0:10:55 > 0:10:59He had no connection with the area.
0:10:59 > 0:11:05Strategically it was between Paris and the garrison towns on the German border,
0:11:05 > 0:11:09but in that part of the brain where psychology and topography meet,
0:11:09 > 0:11:11it was more than that.
0:11:11 > 0:11:15De Gaulle wrote of the vast, raw, forlorn horizons.
0:11:15 > 0:11:18Melancholy emptiness where nothing changes,
0:11:18 > 0:11:20not the spirit not the place.
0:11:32 > 0:11:37De Gaulle, like Barres, was a solitary
0:11:37 > 0:11:39who immersed himself in the depths of woods,
0:11:39 > 0:11:43took succour from the signals he discerned in nature.
0:11:43 > 0:11:48Like Barres, he believed that he was communing with a higher reality.
0:12:04 > 0:12:10Destiny then is a delusion prompted by...
0:12:18 > 0:12:23..and a multitude of furry mammals scurrying nowhere in particular.
0:12:48 > 0:12:55In July 1940, the opium-smoking jobseeking Admiral Emile Muselier
0:12:55 > 0:12:58sucked up to de Gaulle by proposing that the cross of Lorraine
0:12:58 > 0:13:02should be adopted as the emblem of the free French.
0:13:02 > 0:13:05The two-barred cross is of Byzantine origin.
0:13:05 > 0:13:09The top bar was added in sacred iconography
0:13:09 > 0:13:11so that it could be inscribed INRI -
0:13:11 > 0:13:15"Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews".
0:13:15 > 0:13:21The device is to be found in the coats-of-arms of Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.
0:13:21 > 0:13:26It reached Lorraine by a heraldic genealogical route
0:13:26 > 0:13:28that involved the Dukes of Anjou.
0:13:28 > 0:13:33Such a cross would be a potent symbol for the free French,
0:13:33 > 0:13:37because it graphically defied the hooked cross, the swastika.
0:13:37 > 0:13:41De Gaulle's predictable acceptance of Muselier's proposal
0:13:41 > 0:13:46further augmented Lorraine's religious nationalist mystique.
0:13:46 > 0:13:49Lorraine stood for France.
0:14:05 > 0:14:11Henri Vaugeois founded L'Action Francaise in 1899.
0:14:11 > 0:14:16It was both a movement and a newspaper which propagated that movement.
0:14:16 > 0:14:20It was anti-Dreyfusard, anti-Semitic,
0:14:20 > 0:14:25anti-corporatist, anti-republican, anti-democratic,
0:14:25 > 0:14:27anti-Protestant, anti-Masonic.
0:14:27 > 0:14:31It goes without saying that it was xenophobic.
0:14:31 > 0:14:34Maurice Barres was soon involved
0:14:34 > 0:14:38and so too was the demagogue, Charles Maurras.
0:14:39 > 0:14:42It was Catholic and monarchist.
0:14:42 > 0:14:45It supported Mussolini and Franco.
0:14:45 > 0:14:48However, its enthusiasm for Hitler was tempered,
0:14:48 > 0:14:51not because it disapproved of his doctrine,
0:14:51 > 0:14:54but because it still hadn't got over the defeat by Germany
0:14:54 > 0:14:57at Sedan more than 60 years before.
0:15:01 > 0:15:05And its subsequent pro-Vichy stance
0:15:05 > 0:15:09derived from the odd conviction that by collaborating
0:15:09 > 0:15:12France would retain its identity.
0:15:13 > 0:15:18Identity is a perennial concern of the Far Right.
0:15:18 > 0:15:22Its enemies are rootlessness and cosmopolitanism.
0:15:22 > 0:15:27Identity in this sense is a form of communitarianism,
0:15:27 > 0:15:31which defines people by their race and inherited culture,
0:15:31 > 0:15:36rather than by their individuality, their aspirations and their talents.
0:15:36 > 0:15:38It's a kind of prison.
0:15:40 > 0:15:44In the years after the war, the Second World War,
0:15:44 > 0:15:48one of Action Francais's street hawkers was
0:15:48 > 0:15:50the young Jean-Marie Le Pen.
0:15:50 > 0:15:54Later he would serve in the army in Indo-China and Algeria
0:15:54 > 0:15:57and enter Parliament as its youngest member in 1956
0:15:57 > 0:15:59under the banner of Poujadism
0:15:59 > 0:16:03which took its name from the stationer and rabble-rouser
0:16:03 > 0:16:07Pierre Poujade, the deafening voice of the silent majority.
0:16:11 > 0:16:15There is then a direct link from the nationalism
0:16:15 > 0:16:19and revanchism fomented by the defeat in 1870
0:16:19 > 0:16:22to the chippy paranoiac nationalism of the present-day.
0:16:22 > 0:16:24There's a direct line
0:16:24 > 0:16:28from Barres and Maurras to Jean-Marie
0:16:28 > 0:16:32and thence to his daughter and successor, Marine Le Pen.
0:16:33 > 0:16:37"La Marseillaise" the French National Anthem
0:16:42 > 0:16:44This fringe is always with us.
0:16:44 > 0:16:48It is also always impotent.
0:16:48 > 0:16:52It's erectile dysfunction is due to its being a perpetual dupe.
0:16:52 > 0:16:58More opportunistic populists portray it as a bogey, a no-hoper,
0:16:58 > 0:17:03whilst at the same time filching its ideas and sanitising them.
0:17:05 > 0:17:08Every other strain of French politics changes by the month,
0:17:08 > 0:17:10even by the week.
0:17:10 > 0:17:14The absurd right's inflexibility is a national,
0:17:14 > 0:17:16not to say nationalistic, marvel.
0:17:16 > 0:17:21It stays put. It stays pure. It stays white...mostly.
0:17:21 > 0:17:23It stays wounded.
0:17:23 > 0:17:27Like Philoctetes, its sores will never heal.
0:17:41 > 0:17:46'Sur de vous, et sur d'elle...
0:17:46 > 0:17:48'Beaulieu, Chambord,
0:17:48 > 0:17:50'Tradition, Grand Tourisme.
0:17:50 > 0:17:52'Eprouvez-les chez votre concessionaire.
0:17:52 > 0:17:54'Simca Vedette.'
0:18:09 > 0:18:13The mortally wounded OAS's endgame was played out
0:18:13 > 0:18:16against the glossy backdrop of les trente glorieuses,
0:18:16 > 0:18:20which were not yet so-called.
0:18:20 > 0:18:22Les trente glorieuses...
0:18:22 > 0:18:26Today, it's an everyday phrase that derives from the title of a book
0:18:26 > 0:18:30of the late '70s by the economist Jean Fourastie.
0:18:30 > 0:18:35It signifies the roughly 30 years from the liberation of France
0:18:35 > 0:18:38until the first oil crisis in 1973,
0:18:38 > 0:18:41a period of exponential industrial growth
0:18:41 > 0:18:46and the rush towards modernisation, both public and private.
0:18:58 > 0:19:03The standard of living rose three-fold during this period.
0:19:03 > 0:19:06Fourastie was no doubt an ironist,
0:19:06 > 0:19:08the word "glorious" was a provocation.
0:19:10 > 0:19:14In his estimation, glory derives from the spread of affluence,
0:19:14 > 0:19:18the triumph of consumerism, medical advances,
0:19:18 > 0:19:22improved education, improved working conditions,
0:19:22 > 0:19:24improved public services and so on.
0:19:24 > 0:19:29I own therefore I am. I am happy, I am healthier.
0:19:29 > 0:19:33Now that I drive a Simca Vedette and possess plenty of plenty,
0:19:33 > 0:19:36the state is no longer solely an ideal
0:19:36 > 0:19:42to which I bear quasi-religious fealty and adolescent resentment.
0:19:42 > 0:19:45It is also a supplier with which I enjoy
0:19:45 > 0:19:51a near commercial relationship in exchange for my taxes...
0:19:51 > 0:19:52my heavy taxes.
0:20:15 > 0:20:18For Fourastie then, glory had little to do
0:20:18 > 0:20:22with the nation state's mystical allegiance to soil,
0:20:22 > 0:20:24with self-regarding pomp,
0:20:24 > 0:20:27with fawning exaltations to patriotism.
0:20:27 > 0:20:29Which is just as well,
0:20:29 > 0:20:34for these were otherwise startlingly inglorious years for France,
0:20:34 > 0:20:37marked by political ignominy, political chaos,
0:20:37 > 0:20:40political assassinations, attempted putsches,
0:20:40 > 0:20:42a bloodless coup d'etat,
0:20:42 > 0:20:46presidential mendacity, social catastrophe,
0:20:46 > 0:20:49near revolution and war upon grinding war,
0:20:49 > 0:20:54Europe, Indo-China, Algeria.
0:20:55 > 0:20:58For a mostly preening nation, France's war record
0:20:58 > 0:21:00in the 20th century was dismal.
0:21:00 > 0:21:03Played four, lost four.
0:21:03 > 0:21:06Throwing the sponge becomes habit-forming.
0:21:44 > 0:21:46# Pour celui qui en revient
0:21:47 > 0:21:50# Verdun c'etait bien
0:21:52 > 0:21:54# Pour celui qui en est mort
0:21:56 > 0:21:59# Verdun c'est un port
0:22:02 > 0:22:05# Mais pour ceux qui N'etaient pas nes
0:22:05 > 0:22:08# Qu'etaient pas la pour apprecier
0:22:08 > 0:22:10# C'est du passe
0:22:11 > 0:22:12# Depasse
0:22:14 > 0:22:18# Un champ perdu dans le nord-est
0:22:18 > 0:22:21# Entre Epinal et Bucarest
0:22:21 > 0:22:23# C'est une statue Sur la Grande Place
0:22:23 > 0:22:26# Finalement Verdun
0:22:26 > 0:22:28# Ce n'est qu'un vieux qui passe. #
0:22:31 > 0:22:32Verdun...
0:22:32 > 0:22:38the ten-month battle in 1916 claimed 300,000 lives.
0:22:38 > 0:22:42The name is France's greatest trigger to remembrance.
0:22:43 > 0:22:47It is to France what the Somme is to Britain.
0:22:47 > 0:22:52One difference, of course, is that Verdun is on home soil.
0:22:53 > 0:22:59A second is that beside Lutyen's monument to the Somme's victims at Thiepval,
0:22:59 > 0:23:04the Douaumont ossuary seems architecturally inappropriate.
0:23:07 > 0:23:14It's not exactly frivolous, but it lacks solemnity, it lacks gravity.
0:23:14 > 0:23:19It recalls the architecture of pleasure, monstrously distended.
0:23:19 > 0:23:22It's inimical to meditative remembrance.
0:23:22 > 0:23:25Its architects lacked the nerve
0:23:25 > 0:23:29to address the awful purpose of the monument.
0:23:29 > 0:23:31They shamefully made light of it,
0:23:31 > 0:23:36they created a 140-metre long betrayal of the dead.
0:23:36 > 0:23:40One might also add that they were victims of the Modernist century's
0:23:40 > 0:23:44incapacity to devise a commemorative mode.
0:23:44 > 0:23:48No century ever needed one more.
0:23:48 > 0:23:51# Bien sur que je n'etais pas ne
0:23:51 > 0:23:54# Je n'etais pas la pour apprecier
0:23:54 > 0:23:57# Mais j'avais un vieux a Verdun
0:23:57 > 0:24:01# Et comme je n'oublie jamais rien
0:24:01 > 0:24:02# Je reviens
0:24:05 > 0:24:06# Je reviens
0:24:09 > 0:24:12# Je reviens. #
0:24:24 > 0:24:27This is Paul Verlaine's Ode to Metz.
0:24:27 > 0:24:30"Fate made Metz my cradle.
0:24:31 > 0:24:34"It was raped.
0:24:34 > 0:24:38"Yet it remains demure, more virginal than ever.
0:24:38 > 0:24:40"Childhood was bliss in this place
0:24:40 > 0:24:44"whose fortress was no fortress
0:24:44 > 0:24:48"for its commandant's weapon was the white flag.
0:24:48 > 0:24:51"This was the proud mother I loved."
0:24:53 > 0:24:58The commandant in question was Francois Achille Bazaine.
0:24:58 > 0:25:01In 1870, he threw the sponge
0:25:01 > 0:25:04after Metz had been besieged for two months.
0:25:04 > 0:25:08The animals had been eaten and typhus had become rampant.
0:25:10 > 0:25:13Hardly a cheese-eating surrender monkey
0:25:13 > 0:25:15as the Boche
0:25:15 > 0:25:18and Donald Rumsfeld would have had it.
0:25:31 > 0:25:33When France's porous border admits
0:25:33 > 0:25:37the invading armies of its bad neighbour,
0:25:37 > 0:25:39it admits too German buildings.
0:25:39 > 0:25:42The station at Metz is wholly German.
0:25:42 > 0:25:46The round-arch neo-Romanesque idiom
0:25:46 > 0:25:48forms no part of France's architectural lexicon.
0:25:48 > 0:25:54Barres described it as "an immense, squat, meat pie",
0:25:54 > 0:25:58a characterisation that is more xenophobic than aesthetic.
0:25:58 > 0:26:01The station and the palaces nearby
0:26:01 > 0:26:06were built after the annexation of northern Lorraine in 1870
0:26:06 > 0:26:08at the end of the Franco-Prussian war.
0:26:08 > 0:26:10They're didactic buildings,
0:26:10 > 0:26:14intended as instruments of subjugation.
0:26:14 > 0:26:19They're architectural manifestations of Imperial Prussia's might.
0:26:27 > 0:26:30The restorations of existing buildings
0:26:30 > 0:26:35were designed to rewrite history and render them Teutonic.
0:26:54 > 0:26:571962, the night I arrived at Dunkirk,
0:26:57 > 0:27:02Roger Degueldre, the OAS fighter was arrested in distant Algiers.
0:27:02 > 0:27:05He was tried by a kangaroo court.
0:27:05 > 0:27:09Edgard de Larminat, the general who was to have presided over that court,
0:27:09 > 0:27:13killed himself rather than sit in pre-judgment.
0:27:13 > 0:27:17On July 5, 1962, Algeria became independent.
0:27:17 > 0:27:22The next day, Roger Degueldre was clumsily executed by firing squad,
0:27:22 > 0:27:25most of whose members tried to miss the target.
0:27:25 > 0:27:28This judicial murder eventually took half-an-hour.
0:27:32 > 0:27:36The sentence was devised to appease bien pensant piety,
0:27:36 > 0:27:38to sate liberal blood lust.
0:27:38 > 0:27:42After his death, he was the object of black propaganda.
0:27:42 > 0:27:44He had been a Belgian,
0:27:44 > 0:27:46a collaborator,
0:27:46 > 0:27:50a member of the Waffen SS Wallonien brigade.
0:27:50 > 0:27:53He had in fact been a resistant,
0:27:53 > 0:27:56as have many other members of the OAS.
0:27:56 > 0:28:00This of course did not and does not accord
0:28:00 > 0:28:04with the canonisation of the OAS as fascist.
0:28:04 > 0:28:06On the contrary.
0:28:06 > 0:28:09As Winston Churchill had observed 20 years before,
0:28:09 > 0:28:12the quasi-fascist was Charles de Gaulle
0:28:12 > 0:28:17who had conducted his resistance from Carlton Gardens in St James's.
0:28:19 > 0:28:22Degueldre's grave in the Gonards Cemetery at Versailles
0:28:22 > 0:28:24is the site of an annual ceremony,
0:28:24 > 0:28:28attended by his fellow outcasts who survived,
0:28:28 > 0:28:33men and women turned into pariahs by De Gaulle's treachery.
0:28:33 > 0:28:36It routinely prompts protests.
0:28:36 > 0:28:39Algeria is always with us.
0:29:03 > 0:29:06The conjunctions of Belgium and France,
0:29:06 > 0:29:09Germany and France, Switzerland and France,
0:29:09 > 0:29:11Italy and France have produced
0:29:11 > 0:29:15no significant architectural mongrelism.
0:29:15 > 0:29:18Lille is all Parisian boulevards and Flemish backstreets.
0:29:18 > 0:29:21Strasbourg is either over-Deutsch
0:29:21 > 0:29:23or hyper-Francais.
0:29:23 > 0:29:25There's no fusion,
0:29:25 > 0:29:27no metissage.
0:29:27 > 0:29:32Architectural apartheid was the rule until the coming of Modernism.
0:29:40 > 0:29:43The European Court of Human Rights derives ultimately
0:29:43 > 0:29:49from the 1789 declaration of the rights of mankind and citizens.
0:29:49 > 0:29:51It is of course misnamed.
0:29:51 > 0:29:54It's the European Court of Special Pleading.
0:29:55 > 0:29:57We're showered at birth
0:29:57 > 0:30:00with the promise of potential entitlements
0:30:00 > 0:30:03and should those entitlements not be fulfilled,
0:30:03 > 0:30:07we can come here and complain and so line the pockets
0:30:07 > 0:30:10of the pious shysters of the human rights industry.
0:30:14 > 0:30:16No matter.
0:30:16 > 0:30:20The architecture of this dodgy institution on the French-German border
0:30:20 > 0:30:25is indistinguishable from that of buildings on the Polish-Lithuanian border.
0:30:36 > 0:30:39Homogenisation has its benefits.
0:30:39 > 0:30:43Modernism has no nationalist etiquette attached to it.
0:30:43 > 0:30:46It's the pan-European idiom.
0:30:46 > 0:30:49It does not express disparities.
0:30:50 > 0:30:57The constant injunction to celebrate vibrant diversity is moronic.
0:30:57 > 0:31:01It is shared qualities which should be appreciated.
0:31:02 > 0:31:07To emphasise differences merely consigns people to their background,
0:31:07 > 0:31:12where they've come from, to their tribe, their caste, their religion.
0:31:12 > 0:31:14It creates ghettos.
0:31:14 > 0:31:18France's regionalism, France's fragmentation
0:31:18 > 0:31:23is exacerbated by its borderland absorption of Belgium, Germany,
0:31:23 > 0:31:25Switzerland, Italy, Spain.
0:31:26 > 0:31:31What is notable is the absence of reciprocity.
0:31:31 > 0:31:33France borrows from its neighbours.
0:31:33 > 0:31:37Approximate linguistic expressions apart,
0:31:37 > 0:31:40its neighbours are less prone to borrow from it.
0:31:40 > 0:31:42Universalism doesn't travel.
0:32:00 > 0:32:03What do you call good German cooking?
0:32:03 > 0:32:06You call it Alsatian cooking,
0:32:06 > 0:32:09boastful but probably correct.
0:32:09 > 0:32:13Alsace enjoys the reputation of being the most gastronomic region
0:32:13 > 0:32:16of the most gastronomic country on Earth.
0:32:16 > 0:32:19Yet there's an obvious paradox here
0:32:19 > 0:32:23for its cooking is only French by appropriation.
0:32:29 > 0:32:32The characteristic dishes are German.
0:32:32 > 0:32:34Presskopf, Baeckeoffe,
0:32:34 > 0:32:36Flammkuchen.
0:32:36 > 0:32:41Many dishes arrived from further east with the Ashkenazi Diaspora.
0:32:41 > 0:32:45The bias against Dreyfus was more than anti-Semitic.
0:32:45 > 0:32:50He was a Jew whose family had lived, until its annexation,
0:32:50 > 0:32:53in Alsace, a place of ambiguous loyalties
0:32:53 > 0:33:01which excited a suspicion in deepest unequivocal French-most France.
0:33:13 > 0:33:17ARCHIVE RECORDING: 'Notice the Nazi salute of the Vichy Frenchman.
0:33:20 > 0:33:23'This is the man whose word we should have to trust in negotiations
0:33:23 > 0:33:25'with conquered France,
0:33:25 > 0:33:29'Laval, whose habit of eating frogs makes him technically a cannibal.'
0:33:45 > 0:33:48The actively collaborationist and the actively resistant
0:33:48 > 0:33:54represented a tiny fragment of France's population.
0:33:54 > 0:33:56The precise figures will never be known.
0:33:56 > 0:33:59Private fear, public shame.
0:33:59 > 0:34:04Both extreme factions attracted turncoats who moved between them,
0:34:04 > 0:34:10the invariable behaviour of the politically opportunistic.
0:34:10 > 0:34:13The myth of resistance and its counter myth
0:34:13 > 0:34:17have contaminated France for well over half a century.
0:34:19 > 0:34:24For every shaven-headed woman, for every Laval justly executed,
0:34:24 > 0:34:29for every scapegoat like Brasillach condemned by a show trial,
0:34:29 > 0:34:33there were numberless subsequently amnesiac officials
0:34:33 > 0:34:37who simply swapped one regime for another.
0:34:37 > 0:34:41Well-connected war criminals rose through the peace-time ranks
0:34:41 > 0:34:43to powerful positions under the patronage
0:34:43 > 0:34:46of all the presidents of the Fifth Republic,
0:34:46 > 0:34:51from De Gaulle to the laughably compromised Francois Mitterrand.
0:34:51 > 0:34:54Just as their forebears were unquestioningly obedient
0:34:54 > 0:34:56in their submission to Hitler
0:34:56 > 0:34:59and to the dictates of the racial state,
0:34:59 > 0:35:04subsequent generations of Germans have been unquestioningly obedient
0:35:04 > 0:35:09in their expressions of shame and ancestral culpability.
0:35:09 > 0:35:14France has suffered no such collective expiation.
0:35:14 > 0:35:18The occupation was another episode in France's interminable civil war.
0:35:18 > 0:35:22Right against left, monarchism against republicanism,
0:35:22 > 0:35:25Catholic against the evil alliance
0:35:25 > 0:35:29of Masons, Protestants and secularists.
0:35:29 > 0:35:33The OAS included former collaborators and former resistance.
0:35:33 > 0:35:38Men who'd been deported to Dachau, men who had deported them.
0:35:40 > 0:35:43The black propaganda continues 50 years on.
0:35:43 > 0:35:47Denunciation, forged documents, satanic rumour mills.
0:35:48 > 0:35:51The proof is never simple.
0:35:51 > 0:35:56The Minister for the colonies and the first Vichy administration was Henry Lemery.
0:35:56 > 0:35:58He was black.
0:36:01 > 0:36:03The baguette is not French.
0:36:03 > 0:36:05According to its creation myth,
0:36:05 > 0:36:11it was introduced to Paris from Vienna, in 1830, by August Zang.
0:36:11 > 0:36:17In France, Zang was a baker. In Vienna, he was a press tycoon.
0:36:17 > 0:36:20This is a not-uncommon combination of pursuits.
0:36:20 > 0:36:22One thinks of Rupert Murdoch.
0:36:26 > 0:36:32France withdrew from Indo-China after the debacle at Dien Bien Phu in 1954.
0:36:32 > 0:36:35It might have been yesterday.
0:36:35 > 0:36:39Georges Boudarel was a French teacher in Saigon who, in 1950,
0:36:39 > 0:36:42had defected to the Vietminh.
0:36:42 > 0:36:46He set about re-educating French prisoners.
0:36:46 > 0:36:51When they proved ineducable, he starved and tortured them.
0:36:51 > 0:36:57He was responsible for the death of almost 300 of his compatriots.
0:36:57 > 0:36:59He was sentenced to death in absentia.
0:36:59 > 0:37:03Years later, one of his victims who had survived
0:37:03 > 0:37:06recognised him in Paris.
0:37:06 > 0:37:09He was put on trial for Crimes Against Humanity.
0:37:09 > 0:37:15He had embarked on a university career, teaching history, of course.
0:37:15 > 0:37:19Scores of academics - useful idiots - came out in his support,
0:37:19 > 0:37:22muttering about colonialist revisionism and a manhunt.
0:37:23 > 0:37:27Boudarel was freed under the terms of an amnesty.
0:37:28 > 0:37:33Daniele Minne, aka Djamila Amrane, was also amnestied.
0:37:33 > 0:37:37She was part of a group that planted bombs
0:37:37 > 0:37:41in three Algiers cafes on 26 January 1957.
0:37:41 > 0:37:47Four women died, 40 people - again mostly women - were wounded.
0:37:47 > 0:37:50Five children and many adults suffered amputations.
0:37:50 > 0:37:53She, too, pursued an academic career
0:37:53 > 0:37:57which culminated in Chair at Toulouse University.
0:37:57 > 0:38:01Her disciplines you couldn't make this up were women's studies
0:38:01 > 0:38:04and the history of decolonisation.
0:38:04 > 0:38:08There are countless instances of the scum rising to the top.
0:38:11 > 0:38:14The French state's masochistic honouring of its enemies
0:38:14 > 0:38:19and its sadistic contempt for "les petites gens" is ingrained.
0:38:19 > 0:38:23It's only comprehensible when you realise that the French state,
0:38:23 > 0:38:28having no-one else to rebel against, rebels against itself.
0:38:54 > 0:39:00Claude Nicolas Ledoux's Royal Saltworks was a utopian saltworks.
0:39:00 > 0:39:02Utopianism is relative.
0:39:02 > 0:39:05It must be measured against the norms of its time.
0:39:05 > 0:39:10For those who lived and worked here, it was humane, salubrious
0:39:10 > 0:39:17and a world away from the incarceratory treadmills and noxious slums of saltworks thitherto.
0:39:19 > 0:39:21The fragment that was built is cyclopean,
0:39:21 > 0:39:27aggressive, fetishistic, proto-Brutalist,
0:39:27 > 0:39:30lowering, exhilaratingly sullen.
0:39:30 > 0:39:33Ledoux was French, his architecture wasn't.
0:39:33 > 0:39:35His inspiration was Jon Vanbrugh,
0:39:35 > 0:39:40whose buildings he visited in 1769 and 1770.
0:39:40 > 0:39:45Vanbrugh is pigeonholed - wrongly pigeonholed - as Baroque.
0:39:45 > 0:39:50Ledoux is pigeonholed - wrongly pigeonholed - as Neoclassical.
0:39:50 > 0:39:56These labels are fatuous. There is only school - the school of talent.
0:39:56 > 0:40:01Among the city's many unrealised buildings was a utopian brothel,
0:40:01 > 0:40:05whose utopian ground plan was in the form of a utopian penis.
0:40:05 > 0:40:10That's to say, fully and permanently erect.
0:40:10 > 0:40:15Such architecture whose function is advertised literally
0:40:15 > 0:40:19would come to be called "architecture parlante".
0:40:21 > 0:40:25The public toilet in the form of a syringe.
0:40:25 > 0:40:29A new House of Commons in the form of a suitcase full of money,
0:40:29 > 0:40:31or a cash dispenser. That sort of thing.
0:40:48 > 0:40:54Jean-Baptiste Andre Godin was an oven manufacturer in Picardy.
0:40:54 > 0:40:58The company that bears his name still exists.
0:40:58 > 0:41:02So, too, does his Familistere.
0:41:02 > 0:41:08Realised according to the ideas of Charles Fourier soon after the Revolution.
0:41:08 > 0:41:12Fourier's plan was for the world's population to be divided
0:41:12 > 0:41:17into groups or phalanxes of 1,620 people.
0:41:17 > 0:41:22Autonomous, polyandrous, communal, distributist.
0:41:23 > 0:41:26Godin's scheme was more modest.
0:41:26 > 0:41:31Nonetheless, he housed over half a phalanx.
0:41:31 > 0:41:34Children were educated according to Fourier's methods,
0:41:34 > 0:41:39precursors of today's discredited child-centred learning.
0:41:56 > 0:42:01The modernism of "les trente glorieuses" was a direct reaction
0:42:01 > 0:42:06to the formal, smooth, pre-war Modernism whose master was Le Corbusier.
0:42:06 > 0:42:13The reaction to Le Corbusier was led by Le Corbusier -
0:42:13 > 0:42:16an artist who was for ever reinventing himself.
0:42:18 > 0:42:22He was a Swiss peasant who wanted to be a French genius.
0:42:22 > 0:42:28He was a sculptor, collagist, a activist, a catastrophic theorist,
0:42:28 > 0:42:32a totalitarian toady, a collaborator,
0:42:32 > 0:42:35a monk, a socialite,
0:42:35 > 0:42:38a cultural colonialist
0:42:38 > 0:42:42and a utopian follower of Fourier and Godin.
0:42:47 > 0:42:54The five "unite d'habitations" that he designed owe much to the example of those pioneers.
0:42:54 > 0:42:57Once the machine is taken for granted,
0:42:57 > 0:43:00it no longer demands glorification.
0:43:00 > 0:43:03Like Roger Excoffon's typefaces,
0:43:03 > 0:43:09Le Corbusier's post-war manner uses machines, but doesn't worship them.
0:43:15 > 0:43:19The architecture is plastic, expressive.
0:43:19 > 0:43:24There are deliberately rough edges. The materials play at primitivism.
0:43:24 > 0:43:26Purity of form is suppressed,
0:43:26 > 0:43:29impurity of form is more interesting.
0:43:32 > 0:43:35Did I realise this in 1962? No.
0:43:35 > 0:43:38But it did prompt wonder and delight.
0:43:38 > 0:43:41I didn't ask why.
0:43:41 > 0:43:45Nor did I make the link to the Citroen DS and the Mistral typeface.
0:44:18 > 0:44:21Ronchamp was a piece in an unmade jigsaw
0:44:21 > 0:44:24which, whatever that ended up looking like when finished,
0:44:24 > 0:44:30would proclaim the conjunction of France and tomorrow.
0:44:30 > 0:44:34In my second country, the future had already arrived.
0:44:34 > 0:44:38Rather, "a future" had already arrived.
0:44:38 > 0:44:44A future that had nothing to do with nuclear-tooled ideological gangsters
0:44:44 > 0:44:47in 405-lines black-and-white.
0:44:47 > 0:44:50That future did not belong to us.
0:45:01 > 0:45:07The French future, on the other hand, might have looked as though it had suffered multiple amputations
0:45:07 > 0:45:11and would scream if it could. But we had a share in it.
0:45:11 > 0:45:13It was ours, it was here.
0:45:13 > 0:45:16The future existed in the present.
0:45:32 > 0:45:36Pascal Hausermann, who designed it, was Swiss.
0:45:36 > 0:45:41Like Godin, like Le Corbusier, like Rousseau, like Frisch...
0:46:11 > 0:46:14"Les trente glorieuses" saw the advent of mobiletes,
0:46:14 > 0:46:18transistor radios, kitchens.
0:46:18 > 0:46:22It saw the advent of bathrooms and salubrious lavatories.
0:46:22 > 0:46:27The line that Peter Nichols gave to one of his grotesques in The Gorge...
0:46:27 > 0:46:30Where the French fall down is in their toilets.
0:46:30 > 0:46:32- Have you noticed?- Sorry?
0:46:32 > 0:46:35I say, where the French fall down is in their toilets.
0:46:35 > 0:46:39..became ever less applicable. Soon everyone had a telly.
0:46:39 > 0:46:42Once Britain was able to boast smugly
0:46:42 > 0:46:45that the French also fall down on television. No longer.
0:46:45 > 0:46:50And soon, everyone had white goods, electric blenders,
0:46:50 > 0:46:54and Vespas, Bic pens, Colibri lighters
0:46:54 > 0:46:57shaped like a pebble, 45rpm discs,
0:46:57 > 0:47:01multi-changer record players, gadgets, more gadgets,
0:47:01 > 0:47:04and the world's most thrilling car, the Citroen DS.
0:47:04 > 0:47:08People could at last go beyond window-licking.
0:47:12 > 0:47:16"Les trente glorieuses" had their own colours.
0:47:16 > 0:47:20There was a time when every other car was cobalt blue.
0:47:20 > 0:47:25Somewhere between the colour of Gitanes and Gauloises,
0:47:25 > 0:47:28two of the country's predominant scents -
0:47:28 > 0:47:32along with urine, sewers and two-stroke fuel.
0:47:32 > 0:47:34They had their own materials -
0:47:34 > 0:47:37Formica, Tergal...
0:47:42 > 0:47:45Nations and cultures covetly define themselves by their type fonts,
0:47:45 > 0:47:48just as they more manifestly define themselves
0:47:48 > 0:47:51by the languages written in those fonts.
0:47:51 > 0:47:55Alte Schwabacher and Plagwitz in Germany.
0:47:55 > 0:48:00Euskara, Etxeak, Kaxko, in the Basque country.
0:48:00 > 0:48:04Corcaigh and Paternoster in Ireland.
0:48:04 > 0:48:08Brito and Breizh in Brittany.
0:48:08 > 0:48:10These are logos.
0:48:10 > 0:48:15They are as political and exclusive as a uniform or a flag.
0:48:15 > 0:48:18They expressed nationalist sentiments
0:48:18 > 0:48:22and secessionist longings.
0:48:22 > 0:48:25Les trente glorieuses had their own fonts.
0:48:25 > 0:48:29The creations of the greatest typographer of the age,
0:48:29 > 0:48:31Roger Excoffon.
0:48:31 > 0:48:35Excoffon's creations represent a rupture in typographical practice,
0:48:35 > 0:48:40a break with the formality and sobriety of San Serif modernism,
0:48:40 > 0:48:46which was supposedly functional and which adhered to the machine ethic.
0:48:46 > 0:48:48They make a further break.
0:48:48 > 0:48:52Most typefaces that are founded in handwriting, scribes,
0:48:52 > 0:48:56take as their source italic or copperplate scripts.
0:48:56 > 0:49:00Mistral is based on Excoffon's own hand.
0:49:00 > 0:49:03The sheer ingenuity is extraordinary.
0:49:03 > 0:49:07Other scribes do not attempt to join the letters.
0:49:07 > 0:49:12Excoffon devised a method of doing so, of eliding all the letters of the alphabet,
0:49:12 > 0:49:15of accommodating every permutation.
0:49:15 > 0:49:18Each letter is moulded, even contorted,
0:49:18 > 0:49:21so that it possesses a sort of universal joint.
0:49:21 > 0:49:28Legibility, sense, is often apparent only through a letter's conjunction with its neighbours.
0:49:28 > 0:49:33In isolation, the marks do not invariably read as letters.
0:49:33 > 0:49:36This tendency is taken further in choc,
0:49:36 > 0:49:40which is heavier, and which lacks ligatures.
0:49:40 > 0:49:44It is based not so much in handwriting as an scrawl.
0:49:44 > 0:49:48Characters are pushed to the limit, abstracted.
0:49:48 > 0:49:52Hieroglyphs, ideograms, sketches of fleeting phenomena
0:49:52 > 0:49:56glimpsed out of the corner of an eye from a fast train,
0:49:56 > 0:49:58a bird swoop, a pollard,
0:49:58 > 0:50:01a gamboling lamb.
0:50:01 > 0:50:04Within a couple of years of its publication in 1953,
0:50:04 > 0:50:08Mistral was being used in the most improbable circumstances,
0:50:08 > 0:50:11on the cover of the Playfair Cricket annual,
0:50:11 > 0:50:15which is where I, a child obsessed by handwriting, first saw it.
0:50:15 > 0:50:20But it remains sutured to France, a cricket-free zone.
0:50:20 > 0:50:26And of all the works of applied art of "les trente glorieuses", it is the most enduring.
0:50:26 > 0:50:31It had no precursors and no successors, save a few borrowings.
0:50:31 > 0:50:36The Radisson logo, for instance, attempts to combine Mistral
0:50:36 > 0:50:38and Picasso's signature.
0:50:47 > 0:50:49Alsace-Lorraine.
0:50:49 > 0:50:52They are spoken in the same breath,
0:50:52 > 0:50:56as though they are more than geographically akin.
0:50:56 > 0:50:59But the gulf between Strasbourg and Nancy
0:50:59 > 0:51:03is immeasurably greater than 100 miles.
0:51:03 > 0:51:08Strasbourg is a border city, Nancy most decidedly is not.
0:51:08 > 0:51:12It strives to represent itself as French France.
0:51:12 > 0:51:18Not in some folkloric way. There is nothing franchouillard about it.
0:51:18 > 0:51:21At least not about its architecture.
0:51:21 > 0:51:26It is the city that most physically embodies the Enlightenment.
0:51:26 > 0:51:33It was near here, at Luneville, that Stanislas Leszczynski held his court in exile,
0:51:33 > 0:51:36after he had abdicated from the throne of Poland.
0:51:36 > 0:51:38Abdicated for the second time.
0:51:38 > 0:51:41His daughter, who had the misfortune to inherit his looks,
0:51:41 > 0:51:44married Louis XV, who disliked him,
0:51:44 > 0:51:48but nonetheless granted him the Duchy of Lorraine.
0:51:49 > 0:51:54He devoted himself to receiving such figures as Montesquieu Voltaire and Emilie du Chatelet,
0:51:54 > 0:51:58whom he treated to patisseries that he had himself made.
0:51:58 > 0:52:04He's supposed to have invented the madeleine and the Rum Baba.
0:52:04 > 0:52:10More likely, he introduced from Poland recipes then unfamiliar in France.
0:52:10 > 0:52:13He wrote several works of Epicurean philosophy.
0:52:13 > 0:52:18He counselled happiness, optimism, virtuous hedonism,
0:52:18 > 0:52:22philanthropy, good fellowship, and self regard.
0:52:27 > 0:52:31For him, happiness was owning a dwarf.
0:52:31 > 0:52:37Baby Nicolas, whom he had bought as a child from his peasant parents.
0:52:37 > 0:52:41Bebe was sometimes charming, sometimes intemperate,
0:52:41 > 0:52:45always exhibitionistic, always illiterate,
0:52:45 > 0:52:49always jealous of dwarves smaller than he was.
0:52:51 > 0:52:56Stanislas's greatest work was Nancy, the Versailles for the people.
0:52:58 > 0:53:03Stanislas's architect, Emmanuel Here, spent his entire life in Nancy.
0:53:03 > 0:53:09His buildings are magnificent, and they are vectors of happiness.
0:53:09 > 0:53:13Here may have been French, and his work may have been on French soil,
0:53:13 > 0:53:17but it's stylistically indebted to Bavaria, to Italy,
0:53:17 > 0:53:19and to Stanislas's Poland,
0:53:19 > 0:53:23where all the major works were undertaken by Italians.
0:53:23 > 0:53:27These were countries that were temperamentally sympathetic
0:53:27 > 0:53:31to the essential irrationality of the Baroque.
0:53:31 > 0:53:37Countries where Here's work would not have seemed so atypical.
0:53:37 > 0:53:40Nor would it have seemed so dated.
0:53:40 > 0:53:45The architecture belongs to the fashion of half a century before it was designed.
0:53:45 > 0:53:46But so what?
0:53:46 > 0:53:50The worth of art has nothing to do with novelty,
0:53:50 > 0:53:52with being ahead of the game.
0:54:00 > 0:54:021962.
0:54:02 > 0:54:05The porousness of France's borders
0:54:05 > 0:54:12could hardly have been more clearly or more potently or more humanly demonstrated to me.
0:54:12 > 0:54:17We drove in slow-mo past a bucolic wedding in the garden of a half-timbered inn,
0:54:17 > 0:54:22with steep gables and dormer windows and garlands.
0:54:22 > 0:54:28The guests merrily raised their glasses to us, in response to the parping of the car's horn.
0:54:28 > 0:54:32We arrived at a farm, high on the eastern side of the Vosges.
0:54:32 > 0:54:36I remember the lunch, a sumptuous lunch,
0:54:36 > 0:54:39one of the finest lunches of my life, hare simmered in red wine,
0:54:39 > 0:54:43with spices and bitter chocolate, the sauce thickened with its blood.
0:54:43 > 0:54:47I remember the buttery noodles it was served with.
0:54:47 > 0:54:53I remember drinking eau de vie de mirabelle for the first time in my life.
0:54:53 > 0:54:57I remember a silver thread in the far distance - the Rhine.
0:54:58 > 0:55:03And beyond it, on its right bank, an indistinct spectre.
0:55:03 > 0:55:07A once troubling spectre - the Black Forest, Germany.
0:55:08 > 0:55:12I remember the nonagenarian great-grandmother
0:55:12 > 0:55:15whose 70-year-old daughter had cooked the hare.
0:55:15 > 0:55:20I remember her telling me that this was the house
0:55:20 > 0:55:24where she had been born, and from which she had never moved.
0:55:24 > 0:55:27Yet she had changed nationality four times.
0:55:27 > 0:55:30French, German, French, German, French.
0:55:30 > 0:55:35She told me this without rancour. It was merely what had happened to her.
0:55:35 > 0:55:38She hoped to die French.
0:55:38 > 0:55:39She did.
0:55:54 > 0:55:58Every man has two countries. His own and France.
0:55:58 > 0:56:00Wrong.
0:56:00 > 0:56:02Some men have no country.
0:56:02 > 0:56:06The displaced of Algeria found that out in 1962.
0:56:06 > 0:56:08Their choice famously was,
0:56:08 > 0:56:11"la valise ou le cercueil" -
0:56:11 > 0:56:15"the suitcase or the coffin".
0:56:17 > 0:56:23Expatriation or death. Hundreds of thousands left Algeria.
0:56:23 > 0:56:26Hundreds of thousands were murdered.
0:56:26 > 0:56:30The authors of this overlooked genocide
0:56:30 > 0:56:33were the terrorists of the FLN,
0:56:33 > 0:56:38the National Liberation Front, and their new friend, Charles de Gaulle.
0:56:41 > 0:56:46# Meme s'il y a toujours mon village
0:56:46 > 0:56:49# Ou les enfants du quinzieme age
0:56:49 > 0:56:54# Sautaient les feux de la Saint-Jean
0:56:56 > 0:57:00# Meme s'il y a toujours le cimetiere
0:57:00 > 0:57:04# Ou les filles faisaient des prieres
0:57:04 > 0:57:08# Et repartaient en se signant
0:57:11 > 0:57:16# Je ne le reconnaitrais plus,
0:57:19 > 0:57:23# Ils ont change le nom des rues
0:57:25 > 0:57:32# Je viens d'un pays qui n'existe plus
0:57:32 > 0:57:38# Je viens d'un paradis perdu. #