Foes and fans
Taki
Avording to Mr Michael Winner, the rench people are less than zero, a miserable bunch of rude pikers whose food he cannot stand — 'over-fussed and overpresented' — and, according to a recent poll, fewer than one in ten of Brits disagree with him. Now, as everyone knows, people are entitled to their opinion, even Michael Winner, but when he calls the French cheese-eaters who hardly fired a shot during the second world war, I have to come to their rescue. Close to 120,000 French soldiers died in the two months it took German forces to overrun France, double the number the Americans lost during a ten-year war in Vietnam.
According to the late Ian Ousby, the Wehrmacht was under strict orders not to kill French troops in retreat, so the ones who died were killed fighting. I am not familiar with Michael Winner's war record — he doesn't look the type to have volunteered for service in Malaysia, Aden or Northern Ireland — but! suppose making lousy films could be considered heroic.
If memory serves, and it sure does, it was the British Expeditionary Force. under Lord Gort, which first broke and ran while the French covered its retreat. Just a brief example: my hero, Colonel Christian Marie Ferdinand de la Croix de Castries, the losing commander in Dien Bien Phu, fought for three days in June 1940 with 60 men against a crack German battalion reinforced by tanks, and was taken prisoner only after being wounded and running out of ammunition. (He escaped from Germany after three attempts, and was wounded again in Italy before ending up in Indochina.) I will have more to say about de Castries next month, on the 50th anniversary of Dien Bien Phu.
Mind you, Winner could be taking the mickey. He claims he gave £40 million of his inheritance to the French via his mother's gambling habits in the Cannes casino. Poor Michael. That's like my children hating Aspinall's, wild animals and the British for my own gambling losses. He also accuses the French of rudeness. Zut alors! Why is it that I, having lived in France for 15 years as a young man, never encountered this rudeness? The French are very, very rude when some foreigner speaks rudely to them, c'est tout.
Greeks are far ruder to foreigners, as are Italians. As the British no longer export well-mannered aristocrats, but lager louts who speak no known language, it is not surprising that some cheese-eaters answer in kind. Lighten up, Michael, France is a beautiful country and Paris the greatest city in the world and, as far as les girls are concerned, zey are ze tops.
Winner claims he knows of only three nice Frenchmen. singer Charles Aznavour, actor Alain Delon and an innkeeper in Beaulieu he does not name. Again, poor Michael Winner. Surely he needs to meet more French men and women. What about the academician Michel Deon, one of the 40 immortals, whose 20-odd novels are a delight of gravitas and sophistication, just as their author is? My buddy Jean-Claude Sauer, the great photographer, will keep him in stitches, while the director JeanPaul Rappeneau (his latest film Bon Voyage will captivate you) could give him a lesson or two on how to make watchable movies.
Looking back through the mists of nostalgia, I may be over-romanticising the years I spent in Paris and in the south of France, but so be it. I made many good friends back then, just as I did in England later on. The funny thing is I've kept most of them, and whenever I return it's as if I've never truly been away. Mister Winner should have hung out with the poor little Greek boy's buddies — at least he would have got laid a lot. After all, it always comes down to cherchez la femme. If one gets lucky, the place is good; if one strikes out, the place stinks. Plus ca change.
What I've always adored in French women is their sensibility and chic. As with most women, their reasoning faculties are small, but this has to do with anatomical reasons. (A woman's brain is smaller than a man's, but her organs of sense and anterior part of the brain are larger). Ah, the levity and coquetry of the Gallic fair sex! English women might contribute more to happiness, but French women donate more to pleasure. When an Anglo-Saxon woman cannot resist temptation any longer, she abandons herself completely and renounces the world. Ergo the present divorce rate. Whereas a French lady has no notion of such extreme conclusions. Life goes on hunky-dory, with mistresses and wives getting along swimmingly. It may be frivolous and a bit too luxurious for some, but, as the song tells us, that's the way I like it. I like a woman who is a coquette, like most French girls are and, if Michael Winner does not, that's too bad for him.
Vive la France coquette!
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