Dec 2, 2005
Sheila Johnston: The astonishing war story that a nation chose to forget
Christian Carion grew up in Northern France, "surrounded,'' he says, "by the permanent memory of the First World War''. Yet, for all France's war cemeteries and monuments to the fallen, one event has been repressed and forgotten there: the exceptional acts of friendship that erupted all along the Western Front at Christmas, 1914, when British, French and German soldiers put aside their arms to exchange gifts, sing, celebrate Mass, play football and bury their dead.
Carion, now 42, was in his late twenties when he first heard about this and it came to him as a revelation. Ever since, he has been obsessed with making a film "paying homage to these men who taught us a lesson in humanity''.
That film, Joyeux Noël ("Merry Christmas''), a panoramic portrait of soldiers from three countries who participated in one of these occasions, set box-office records in France last month for a subtitled film (it is shot in French, German and English) and is the country's entry for the Academy Awards.
Somewhat astonishingly in view of its themes of pacifism and resistance to authority, there are also plans to screen it at British military bases in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan at Christmas.
"In Britain, children learn about the Christmas Day truce in school,''
Carion says. "That's not the case at all in France, where, officially, only the British and Germans were involved, and the story was terribly censored.''
The Daily Telegraph published a piece on December 27, 1914, about German and British troops joining in song after exchanging gifts of chocolate cake and cigarettes. "Your press was much freer than the French and German ones. I'm sure that, even if information had reached, say, Le Figaro, it would have remained a well-kept secret,'' says Carion.
A disclaimer at the end of Joyeux Noël insists that its characters are fictional. But Carion says that the detail is historically accurate.
Carion, now 42, was in his late twenties when he first heard about this and it came to him as a revelation. Ever since, he has been obsessed with making a film "paying homage to these men who taught us a lesson in humanity''.
That film, Joyeux Noël ("Merry Christmas''), a panoramic portrait of soldiers from three countries who participated in one of these occasions, set box-office records in France last month for a subtitled film (it is shot in French, German and English) and is the country's entry for the Academy Awards.
Somewhat astonishingly in view of its themes of pacifism and resistance to authority, there are also plans to screen it at British military bases in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan at Christmas.
"In Britain, children learn about the Christmas Day truce in school,''
Carion says. "That's not the case at all in France, where, officially, only the British and Germans were involved, and the story was terribly censored.''
The Daily Telegraph published a piece on December 27, 1914, about German and British troops joining in song after exchanging gifts of chocolate cake and cigarettes. "Your press was much freer than the French and German ones. I'm sure that, even if information had reached, say, Le Figaro, it would have remained a well-kept secret,'' says Carion.
A disclaimer at the end of Joyeux Noël insists that its characters are fictional. But Carion says that the detail is historically accurate.