De Gaulle

Season

2006

France

7.4

Family conversations and meetings depict de Gaulle's life during WWII and the Fourth Republic, offering a personal perspective with vintage newsreels and re-enactments.

Episode List

S1 • E1

Episode #1.1

1969. Général de Gaulle, who has just resigned from the French presidency, is having a walk on the seaside somewhere in Ireland. Accompanied by his wife Yvonne and by an identified man looking like the actor Paul Meurisse, he is exchanging views with them. But what exactly is he saying? Is he talking about his shining hours : his triumphant return to Paris after the war years as he was acclaimed by one million Parisians or his other glorious return to power in 1958 after a twelve-year eclipse? Or about his darker side : his immense pride, his contempt for those who do not live up to their ambitions, his political calculations? Or else about his struggles in the shadows against Churchill, Roosevelt, Giraud and the supporters of French Algeria, no less heroic after all than his formidable fight against Hitler and the Axis forces? Whatever the case may be, when Charles de Gaulle dies several months later while playing a game of solitaire, it is a political giant who disappears.