From Politics to Nostalgia: The Transformation of War Memories in France during the 1960s-1970s

Abstract

This article discusses changes in collective memory of World War Two in France during the 1960s—1970s on the basis of a contextualized discussion of three films, all of which adopt, it is argued, a self-conscious politics of memory. The films are taken as examples of a particular relationship to World War Two that was historically possible in a given political context. As in most of the literature, ‘the 1968 years’ are taken as a moment of change, but it is argued here that they constituted the end rather than the start of a series of political challenges to collective memory of World War Two. During the 1970s representations of World War Two in cinema as well as public discourse more generally were increasingly historicized and disconnected from contemporary society, and thus de-politicized.