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Coco Chanel biopic opens in France - but ignores affair with Nazi

But the biopic, Coco Avant Chanel, has been criticised for "ignoring" her affair with the Nazi officer, Hans Gunther von Dincklage.

Instead the film focuses on what its director calls the miserable, "pure Balzac" early years of Gabrielle Chanel, nicknamed "Coco" during her failed attempt to launch a singing career.

The film sees her move from poverty to high society, from young hat-maker to her first catwalk show.

But it stops short of the darker period in her life - her affair with the Nazi officer at Paris's Ritz hotel during the Occupation.

It also fails to mention that Chanel tried to use the law banning Jews from owning businesses to wrest control of her perfume manufacturing from the Wertheimer family who ran it at that time.

The movie is the first of two feature films about the fashion house founder to open in 2009...
Read entire article at Telegraph (UK)