A British scholar's decade of research into Charles de Gaulle has, through the alchemy of cinema, become France's most searching conversation with itself. Julian Jackson, whose biography gave scholarly form to the general's contradictions, watched nearly six million French citizens rediscover a figure they believed they already knew — and found in that gap between reverence and knowledge something telling about a nation seeking reassurance amid political disenchantment. The film's success is less about nostalgia than about a people reaching, across fifty years of silence, for a moment when lea
British historian reveals how de Gaulle film exposed French public's knowledge gaps
People found it reassuring to latch onto someone who made politics feel magical again
Mark
So a British historian writes a book about de Gaulle, it gets translated into French, and then it becomes the basis for a film that sells six million tickets. That's a remarkable arc. What do you think that tells us?
Mimi
It tells us that the French were hungry for something—not just information about de Gaulle, but a way to feel connected to a figure who seemed to make sense of chaos. Jackson noticed that people were drawn to de Gaulle because he made politics feel meaningful again, almost magical. In a time of real political disenchantment, that's powerful.
Luke
But we should be careful here. The film's success could mean a lot of things. It could mean people wanted entertainment, or that the production was simply well-made. We're attributing psychological motives based on Jackson's interpretation. Do we actually know why people bought tickets?
Mark
Fair point. But Jackson also said something striking—that the French didn't actually know de Gaulle's full story, despite him being so present in their politics. Isn't that the real news?
Mimi
Yes. He was genuinely surprised by how much of de Gaulle's wartime leadership and his negotiations with Churchill and Roosevelt had been forgotten or never learned. People remembered the 1960s de Gaulle, the constitutional visionary, but not the 1940 de Gaulle who refused the armistice and fled to London.
Luke
That's a meaningful observation, but it's anecdotal. Jackson is one historian reacting to conversations after the film. We don't have polling data on what French people actually know about de Gaulle before and after the film. His surprise is real, but it's not the same as proof.
Mark
What about his warnings on current politics? He seems to be saying we shouldn't compare Le Pen to Hitler, even though there are real dangers.
Mimi
He's making a careful distinction. He acknowledges the far-right is dangerous and that Le Pen's party is built on racism and exclusion. But he's resisting the impulse to say this is fascism or that democracy is about to collapse. He thinks we're in a crisis of liberal democracy globally, but the specifics matter.
Luke
And that's where I'd push back slightly. Jackson says there are no militarised movements like fascism, but he also says we've got "something very dangerous." What is that something? He doesn't quite name it. And his confidence that Le Pen wouldn't end democracy—that there would still be elections—is based on what, exactly? Current law? Her stated intentions? Those aren't guarantees.
Mark
So he's offering reassurance without certainty.
Mimi
He's offering perspective. He's saying the present is not a repeat of the 1930s, even if it feels urgent and frightening. That's not nothing.
Luke
No, it's not. But it's also not a prediction. It's a historian saying: this is different from what came before, and we should analyze it on its own terms rather than through historical templates. That's wisdom, but it's also an admission that he doesn't have a clear framework for what's actually happening now.
O Pulso
- A two-part de Gaulle biopic, rooted in Jackson's scholarship, sold nearly six million tickets — a scale of cultural impact that surprised even its own historical adviser.
- The film exposed a startling void: French audiences who invoke de Gaulle's name constantly knew almost nothing of his wartime years, his flight to London, or his long struggle to make Free France credible to Churchill and Roosevelt.
- France is convulsed again — student protests, collapsing approval ratings, surging nationalism — and the temptation to collapse the present into the 1930s is powerful and, Jackson argues, analytically dangerous.
- Jackson draws a careful line: Marine Le Pen's party is exclusionary and racist, he says, but it is not fascism, and its potential victory would not end French democracy — a distinction he insists must not be lost in the rush to historical alarm.
- What the film's phenomenon ultimately reveals is a psychological hunger: a public disenchanted with contemporary politics reaching for a figure who once made power feel meaningful, even magical.
A British scholar's decade of research into Charles de Gaulle has, through the alchemy of cinema, become France's most searching conversation with itself. Julian Jackson, whose biography gave scholarly form to the general's contradictions, watched nearly six million French citizens rediscover a figure they believed they already knew — and found in that gap between reverence and knowledge something telling about a nation seeking reassurance amid political disenchantment. The film's success is less about nostalgia than about a people reaching, across fifty years of silence, for a moment when leadership felt equal to history.
Julian Jackson, a 72-year-old British historian at Queen Mary University of London, spent years producing what became the definitive English-language biography of Charles de Gaulle. He could not have anticipated that this scholarship would place him at the center of France's largest cultural event in recent memory. Serving as adviser and script consultant to director Antonin Baudry, Jackson helped shape a two-part biopic that premiered in May and sold nearly six million tickets — a phenomenon that revealed as much about contemporary France as about its wartime general.
What surprised Jackson most was not the film's success but what that success exposed. He had assumed the French knew de Gaulle's story well, given how persistently his name circulates in political life. Instead, the film made clear that most French people's image of de Gaulle begins in 1958 — the statesman who resolved the Algerian crisis and designed the Fifth Republic. The earlier de Gaulle — the officer who refused the Nazi armistice, fled to London, negotiated with skeptical allies, and painstakingly built a resistance movement from colonial territories and occupied France — had largely vanished from public memory.
Jackson also noted a bitter irony the film quietly contained: when de Gaulle actually left office in 1969, he departed humiliated, driven out by student protests and a failed referendum. The man now invoked as a symbol of national greatness was, at the moment of his exit, widely despised. That the French have since transformed him into a figure of reassurance says something about how nations construct the leaders they need rather than remember the ones they had.
The film's timing is not incidental. France is again shaken by protests, nationalism is ascending, and political disenchantment runs deep. Jackson understands the pull of historical analogy but resists it. The 1930s comparison — economic collapse, scapegoating, the march of fascism — is tempting but misleading, he argues. The current danger is real but structurally different: no militarized movements, no imminent collapse of electoral democracy. He describes Marine Le Pen's party as racist and exclusionary, built on a narrow nationalism of belonging and expulsion. Yet he stops at the darkest parallel: if she wins, he believes, elections will continue. That distinction — between danger and catastrophe — is, for Jackson, precisely what serious historical thinking is for.
Julian Jackson, a 72-year-old British historian at Queen Mary University of London, has become an unlikely architect of France's biggest cultural moment. His 2019 biography of Charles de Gaulle—titled "A Certain Idea of France"—was adapted into a two-part film that premiered in May and has sold nearly six million tickets, making it a national sensation. Jackson served as adviser and script consultant to director Antonin Baudry, lending scholarly weight to what became a phenomenon that revealed something unexpected about the French public itself.
The film's extraordinary success puzzled Jackson at first, until he began to understand what it was actually doing for audiences. "There's a kind of disenchantment with politics in France right now," he told AFP. "People, almost psychologically, found it reassuring to latch onto someone who made politics feel magical again." De Gaulle, dead for 56 years, remains a towering figure in French political imagination—modern leaders from Emmanuel Macron to figures on the right and far-right all claim descent from his legacy. But the film exposed a gap between reverence and knowledge.
What struck Jackson most was how incomplete the French understanding of de Gaulle actually turned out to be. He had assumed the French knew their wartime leader's story intimately, given how often de Gaulle's name surfaces in contemporary political discourse. "I thought everyone knew de Gaulle's story pretty well because he's so present in people's minds," Jackson said. "But after the film came out, I realised just how little the French actually know about de Gaulle. That really surprised me." Most people's mental image of de Gaulle centers on his return to power in 1958, when he resolved the political crisis over Algeria and designed the Fifth Republic's constitution. Few seemed to grasp the full arc: his refusal of the Nazi armistice in 1940, his flight to London to lead the Free France movement, his negotiations with Churchill and Roosevelt, his work building support in colonial territories and linking with the internal Resistance. The de Gaulle of the 1960s—the visionary statesman—had eclipsed the de Gaulle of the war years in public memory.
Jackson also noted a bitter irony: when de Gaulle left office in 1969, humiliated by student protests and a failed referendum, he was "absolutely hated." The man now invoked as a symbol of national greatness had departed in disgrace. Yet the film's success speaks to something deeper than nostalgia. France is convulsed by student protests again, nationalism is rising, and President Macron's approval ratings have plummeted. The temptation to draw historical parallels is strong, but Jackson resists easy comparisons.
He sees the current moment as part of a broader global crisis of liberal democracy rather than a specifically French recurrence. The most obvious historical echo would be the 1930s—economic collapse, scapegoating, the rise of fascism—but Jackson argues the details are fundamentally different. "I'm not sure it's fascism we're faced with today," he said. "There are no militarised movements like fascism that I can see, but we've got something very dangerous." He points to Marine Le Pen, the far-right anti-immigration leader whose party polls suggest would win a presidential election if held today. Jackson calls it "a racist party" and "a party of exclusion" built on narrow nationalism. Yet he stops short of the darkest historical comparison: "I don't think she's a threat to democracy. If she wins, I don't think there will never be another election. That is important. That is not Hitler." The distinction matters—danger is not destiny, and the present, however unstable, remains distinct from the past it echoes.
Citações Notáveis
People, almost psychologically, found it reassuring to latch onto someone who made politics feel magical again.— Julian Jackson, historian
I realised just how little the French actually know about de Gaulle. That really surprised me.— Julian Jackson
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