The film “The Tiger and the President” will be released this Wednesday in theaters. This first feature film by director Jean Marc Peyreffite, shot in particular in Nantes and Jard-sur-mer, features the illustrious Vendée Georges Clemenceau and Paul Deschanel. It recounts the rivalry in 1920 between the 2 men embodied by Andre Dussolier (Clemenceau) and Jacques Gamblin (Deschanel). But the society of friends of Georges Clemenceau denounces a large number of factual errors and a film which “gravely harms the honor of Georges Clemenceau“.
For the company in its press release, the film is currently presented as “inspired by real events”, which makes “impossible for an uninformed spectator to distinguish between truth and falsehood“. And to list some notable errors:
- Clemenceau would be married to an Englishwoman named Rose. His wife was American.
- Clemenceau would negotiate and sign the Treaty of Versailles face to face with a German.
- Clemenceau would campaign in the Chamber of Deputies for the presidency of the Republic in January 1920: he always refused.
- Clemenceau obviously never tried to poison Deschanel.
- He never had a fake visit to the front filmed for the good reason that he spent a third of his time there under real bombs between November 1917 and November 1918.
Jean-Francois Bourasseau, secretary general of the Clemenceau and De Lattre museums in Mouilleron-en-paredsregrets these liberties taken with historical reality: ” I find it embarrassing and I have received many reactions from historians and people who know Clemenceau’s life well (…) what are the real facts? “. Died nearly a century ago in 1929, “Father Victory” continues to fascinate visitors to the Mouilleron-en-Pareds museum, created in his birthplace: ” The average visitor will stay more than an hour and a half in this museum, so we learn about Clemenceau, the context in which he worked and especially the values of the Republic. we have 6 types of visits according to school levels”. Books still come out every year on the many facets of the former chairman of the board. And a TV movie centered on his relationship with Marguerite Baldensperger will be shot at the end of September, notably in Jard-sur-mer.
– Yves-Rene Tapon
– Yves-Rene Tapon