During
World War II the Germans occupied France and ruled through
a puppet government. Some French collaborated with the Germans;
others resisted. A dramatic episode of the French Resistance
in 1943 is brought to the screen in the 1997 French film Lucie
Aubrac, which opened in the Los Angeles area during
fall 1999. The plot, based on Lucie Aubrac's autobiography
Ils partiront dans l'ivresse (Outwitting the Gestapo in English)
and directed by Claude Berri, portrays the heroism of the
Resistance. Raymond Aubrac (played by Daniel Auteuil) and
his fellow Resistance buddies in Lyon blow up a bridge to
destroy a convoy of German munitions as the film begins. When
one of their leaders in Paris is arrested, the Lyon Resistance
cadre arranges to meet to redesign the organizational structure
but is betrayed by an infiltrator codenamed Hardy (played
by Pascal Greggory). Raymond Aubrac is arrested along with
the others at the meeting, and most are tortured and executed
on orders from Klaus Barbie (played by Heino Ferch), the "butcher
of Lyon." His wife Lucie (played by Carole Bouquet) seeks
to release her husband. First, she threatens a French magistrate
with death if he is not released, and she succeeds. But he
is picked up again, so a more elaborate scheme involving the
remaining Resistance cadre is planned and carried out smoothly.
The subtext of the film, however, is that Hardy and other
collaborators were never brought to justice, though Klaus
Barbie was. Although the film is more about Raymond than Lucie
Aubrac, the film is dedicated to her for having the courage
to write the book and thereby expose an injustice that obviously
is one among. MH
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