I'm watching Nancy Wake: Gestapo's Most Wanted, a 2014 production about the incredibly brave and awe-inspiring heroine from New Zealand who courageously helped the French Resistance first hand in France during WWII. Her story is remarkable and deserves EVeryone's attention.
My problem is with this rather sketchy production. While the docudrama is decently told, there's one overwhelmingly glaring problem: the so-called eyewitness testimonies scattered throughout the film are by 50-60-70 year old men who claim they spoke with her and knew her, and worse ACT like they were there in WWII alongside her.
Nothing is or can be further from the truth. The film was made in 2014. She was born in 1912 (so she was about 28-33 during WWII). These supposed eye-witnesses were at most young children or WEREN'T EVEN BORN YET!!
While I understand these "eye-witness" are probably journalist-historians who interviewed her 50-60 years after the fact (she died in 2011), the fimmaker's representations that they "knew her" are eXtremely misleading. They knew her as a very, VeRY elderly lady. And while there's nothing wrong with that - nothing at all - something is Very Wrong (and unnecessary) in their attempts to mislead the viewer into believing they were there with her in WWII, when there is no possible way that could have been the case.
It's cheap.
Nancy Wake and her incredible story deserve far better.
Nancy's story deserves to be told, but not through deceptions like this. And for that reason in particular, I give this docudrama a rating of about 6.5/10.
As for Nancy Wake the war heroine, she deserves, oh.. at least about 100 out of 10 stars.~ pdb.
My problem is with this rather sketchy production. While the docudrama is decently told, there's one overwhelmingly glaring problem: the so-called eyewitness testimonies scattered throughout the film are by 50-60-70 year old men who claim they spoke with her and knew her, and worse ACT like they were there in WWII alongside her.
Nothing is or can be further from the truth. The film was made in 2014. She was born in 1912 (so she was about 28-33 during WWII). These supposed eye-witnesses were at most young children or WEREN'T EVEN BORN YET!!
While I understand these "eye-witness" are probably journalist-historians who interviewed her 50-60 years after the fact (she died in 2011), the fimmaker's representations that they "knew her" are eXtremely misleading. They knew her as a very, VeRY elderly lady. And while there's nothing wrong with that - nothing at all - something is Very Wrong (and unnecessary) in their attempts to mislead the viewer into believing they were there with her in WWII, when there is no possible way that could have been the case.
It's cheap.
Nancy Wake and her incredible story deserve far better.
Nancy's story deserves to be told, but not through deceptions like this. And for that reason in particular, I give this docudrama a rating of about 6.5/10.
As for Nancy Wake the war heroine, she deserves, oh.. at least about 100 out of 10 stars.~ pdb.