Shadows of collaboration: a french film ignites vichy-era debate

Xavier Giannoli’s Les Rayons et les Ombres (Rays and Shadows) isn’t just a film; it’s a cultural grenade lobbed into the heart of France. Already drawing impressive crowds – over 300,000 in its opening week – the three-plus-hour epic is forcing a long-overdue reckoning with the complexities of the Vichy period and the moral compromises made during the German occupation.

A daughter's dilemma, a father's fall

The film centers on Corinne Luchaire, once dubbed “the new Garbo,” whose glittering career falters as she becomes entangled with powerful figures during the war. Nastya Golubeva Carax delivers a captivating performance as the actress, grappling with the legacy of her father, Jean Luchaire, a press baron executed for treason in 1946. The narrative unfolds through Corinne’s recorded reflections, a fragile tapestry of memory and denial violently unraveling when a Jewish film director, a figure instrumental in her early success, confronts her with the fate of his sister – a stark reality she seemingly chose to ignore. The simple question – “Did you even try to find out?” – cuts through years of willful blindness.

Beyond nuance: a controversial portrait of power

But Les Rayons et les Ombres isn’t offering a straightforward condemnation. Giannoli deliberately avoids portraying Jean Luchaire as a last-minute convert to Nazism. Instead, the film presents a portrait of a disillusioned, spendthrift man whose moral failings and financial recklessness inadvertently fuel his downfall. This approach, while lauded by many center and right-leaning critics as a refreshing display of historical nuance, has drawn fierce criticism from left-leaning publications like Libération and L’Humanité, who accuse the film of relativizing the actions of those who actively collaborated with the Nazi regime. The film doesn't shy away from depicting the decadent world that enabled this collaboration: black-market deals, lavish embassy parties fueled by endless champagne, and even drug-fueled revelries at Maxim’s and Fouquet’s, a world Giannoli painstakingly recreated, reportedly spending a fortune on authentic caviar.

The director's obsession: media, money, and moral decay

Giannoli, the son of a prominent French journalist, has long been preoccupied with the corrosive influence of media and wealth. His previous film, an adaptation of Honoré de Balzac’s Lost Illusions, explored the transformation of Parisian journalism from a pursuit of enlightenment to a profit-driven enterprise churning out “fake news.” Les Rayons et les Ombres extends this examination, tracing the insidious slide of a once-pacifist journalist into antisemitism and active complicity.

A seductive betrayal: casting choices and historical context

The casting of Jean Dujardin (The Artist) as Jean Luchaire was, according to Giannoli, intentional. He sought an actor capable of embodying a