Paris Was Liberated 65 Years Ago Today

This probably has a lot to do with the strong feelings I have about the Japanese military occupation of the Philippines (which as a teenager my mother suffered through) as much as my humble adoration of the City of Light, but one of my favorite war films is Rene Clement's almost-jaunty 1966 epic, Paris Brule-t-il? (Is Paris Burning?), based on the 1961 book by Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins about the breakneck effort to get the Allies to Paris before the occupying Germans burned it to the ground in their retreat. I remember when the making of this picture was in the news. Ed Sullivan traveled to Europe to interview the cast, and it was a tremendous cast: Orson Welles, Yves Montand, Leslie Caron (who I once met a few years ago), Boyer, Belmondo, Signoret, Kirk Douglas—the list of French, American, English and German actors went on and on.

When Michael and I lived in Paris we used to visit a friend, Georges Heymann, who had been a bookseller in Paris during the Occupation until the Nazis got hold of him. Oh, the stories he told.

Michael with Retired Bookseller Georges Heyman

At any rate, the verklempt moment for me in Paris Brule-t-il? is the scene just when the advancing French troops, many of them Parisian, finally reach the city to wrest it from the Nazis. It’s in part two of the film and lasts barely five seconds. Right before honing in on the Allied tanks rumbling down the street the camera quickly, almost casually, brushes past a sign—a sign for a Metro stop: The Port d’Orleans, the first Metro stop when you come into Paris from the south. Ils sont nos soldats, ceux-ci. Finalement ils sont nous revenus.

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