French furious over ‘deplorable’ Dunkirk

THE French are furious over a new historical movie that, they say, diminishes their country's role in a WWII evacuation.

Dunkirk, the Christopher Nolan-directed film that hit cinemas last week, shows a "scathing rudeness [and] deplorable indifference" toward France for its role in the Dunkirk evacuation of 1940, said a blistering review in the French newspaper Le Monde.

Dunkirk trailer

"Where in the film are the 120,000 French soldiers who were also evacuated from Dunkirk?" critic Jacques Mandelbaum wrote. "Where are the 40,000 who sacrificed themselves to defend the city against a superior enemy in weaponry and numbers?"

But British journalist, editor and author Max Hastings defended "the film.

"The French will have to make their own film if they want their national story properly told," he told the Times of London.

This story was originally published in the New York Post and is reprinted with permission.