|
|
The Last Summer (Le dernier été, 1997) Director: Claude Goretta Georges Mandel (June 5, 1885—July 7, 1944) was a French politician, journalist, and French Resistance leader, born Louis George Rothschild in Chatou, Seine-et-Oise, the son of a tailor: his family (not related to the Rothschild banking dynasty) was Jewish, and had fled from Alsace in to preserve their French citizenship when Alsace-Lorraine was annexed by the German Empire at the end of the Franco-Prussian War. Mandel began working life as a journalist for L'Aurore, the paper of Émile Zola, Georges Clemenceau, and the defenders of Alfred Dreyfus, during the Dreyfus Affair. Clemenceau brought Mandel into politics when he was Minister of the Interior. Mandel also helped Clemenceau control the press and the trade union movement during World War I. He was elected to the Chamber of Deputies from Gironde in 1919 and lost his seat when the Cartel des Gauches swept the 1924 election. However, he returned to office in 1928. He kept the position until the World War II finished. On the 8th of August, Mandel was arrested in Morocco, on the orders of Laval and then conveyed to the Château de Chazeron, where Reynaud, Edouard Daladier and General Maurice Gamelin were also being held prisoner. Mandel and Reynaud were given over to the Gestapo after the occupation of the Vichy territory in November 1942. He was deported first to Oranienburg then to Buchenwald, where he was held with Léon Blum. Mandel was returned to Paris on July 4, 1944 as a hostage, and placed in the custody of Joseph Darnand's Milice. Three days later he was taken to the Forest of Fontainbleau -where he was murdered in retaliation for the assassination of the Vichy Minister of Propaganda, Philippe Henriot, by members of the Maquis. A monument to Mandel's memory is set up near his place of execution, alongside the road linking Fontainebleau to Nemours. 1934, Georges Mandel (Jacques Villeret), close to Clemenceau, one of the most talented Deputee in the National Assembly is appointed Minister of PTT. It gives him the opportunity to indulge his sole purpose: to act. Acting for a public service worth the name. Acting for progress. Even most importantly, taking action against the rise of Nazism in Germany and the extreme right-wing in France. . Inflexible, Georges Mandel will lead a battle at all times. |
