Monsignor Renard [DVD]

This excellent 4 episode drama, set in a small French town at the beginning of WW2, was made for ITV and stars John Thaw (Morse) as Monsignor Renard - a priest returning to his hometown just as the Nazi's invade France. As he struggles to win back the affection of his estranged brother, and come to terms with his former sweetheart whom he left to join the priesthood, Renard finds himself in the role of go between for the villagers and the invading German army.

As Renard fights to keep the townsfolk safe and to solve the problems that occupation brings - girls beginning to date the German soldiers, escaped RAF men needing help, local youths determined to cause trouble whenever they can, children missing after being separated from their parents, not to mention the plight of a Jewish woman and her child - he realises that day to day life in France may never be the same.

One of the local youths (Dominic Monaghan - Lord of the Rings, Lost) in particular is cocky and taunting, but when he finaly goes to far can Renard save him? Some of the German officers are decent and wish to live peaceably with the locals - but Renard is all too aware of the tensions and must try to keep the two sides apart.

With high production values and pacey scripts, this series was perhaps the victim of the costs of making it. Only 4 stories were made. A pity, but perhaps ITV could revisit the series and recast the lead role?

For viewers who enjoyed the ordinary struggles of occupied Jersey depicted in Island at War and Enemy at the Door, Monsignor Renard is a must have series. Fans of John Thaw will welcome one of his finest acting performances in his long and award laden career.

It has been a pleasure to watch this atmosperic and epic film about an upright French priest in occupied France in the 1940s. Setting and cast are convincing, so is the plot. And for once the Germans, Wehrmacht and Geheimpolizei, are depicted in a balanced way; even the German spoken is idiomatic and authentic! All too often Germans in British films sound artificial and as if they were short of breath. Highly recommended (I am German)!

Like the two reviews above, I equally found this a highly fulfilling drama series which looked at life in occupied France in a different way to most series of its type, focusing on the first months of occupation rather than on the later years of open resistance.

For me the strength of the series lay not in the exciting nature of the story being told (which was nonetheless interesting) but more so in the way the story was told. For example, as the writer above correctly recognizes, there were good Germans as well as bad ones and evil French characters as well as heroic ones which made the story all the more real. It was fascinating to see that the deterioration of the relationship between the French and Germans in the small town come about not so much (just) because the Germans were oppressing the French but much more so because the nature of occupation itself made maintaining good relations between the occupied and occupier impossible, regardless of intentions (a fact all too clear in modern day Iraq). This fact is driven home in the climatic final scenes where the, on the whole fairly reasonable considering his position, German colonel in charge of the town garrison is forced to take a decision that he himself knows is wrong because that is what his superior orders him to do. The reaction of a very "human" German private further emphasizes this point.

Another part of the series that I found fascinating was the fact it looked at the first months of occupation and not the later years as most French resistance movies tend to do. This was a time when most French still didn't know how to react to the German invaders and didn't know whether armed resistance was the justified or the right reaction to have. This part of the story is very effectively driven home by the character of Monsignor Reinard (John Thaw) who has an ongoing fight with himself to keep his reaction to the German invaders(and more so his influence over his congregation) resistant yet still peaceful. Again the fact that the German occupiers themselves are not just painted in one evil way (as is often portrayed in resistance movies and also as may actually have been more the case in later years of the war) reinforces this point because the msg is too clear that just because a wrong is done to you, does not necessarily justify a violent reaction. You sense that violence will be, as was the case, the inevitable outcome of the occupation but at the same time you get a feeling unlike most Second World War movies that the battle was not for all characters a simple battle of good against evil. However saying this, the movie makes enough references to the horrible things to come (the ½ Jewish mother who flees occupied France to Vichy for example) to make you not forget the horrendous ideology that Nazi Germany had but equally there are enough characters like the drunken German bishop banished to France for speaking out against Nazi idealogy to make one realize that not every German was a believer in such horrendous ideologies, most were rather caught up in the events.

The only criticism I have is that the series left you with a bit of an unfinished feeling, as many of the sub-plots were left unconcluded. However, with hindsight, this does in a way add to the strength of the story as in a way to understand the msg of the movie (if there is one) it is necessary for some stories to be unfinished as part of the charm and interest of this movie is that it focuses on the origins of French resistance rather than on the actual armed resistance itself. Focusing on the origins, allows one to realise that no matter how evil some actions can be, it is never good to over simplify a reaction, as one recent president has done, as doing that can often avoid tackling the routes of the problem itself.

Anyway definitely an insightful and recommended series for anyone interested in what happened in France during the first months of German occupation.