In this episode of Rosie the Reviewer, we embark on a cinematic sortie with Le Grand Cirque (The Big Show), the 1950 French film based on the bestselling memoir by ace pilot Pierre Clostermann. While the movie tries to be authentic with vintage aircraft footage and Free French pride, we found it weighed down by a lack of character depth and narrative, especially compared to Clostermann’s vivid, emotionally resonant book. We discuss Clostermann’s daring missions, the film’s historical context, its unique multilingual quirks, and why this underrated French perspective on WWII deserves more attention, perhaps from Hollywood—preferably with subtitles next time.
🖥️ Visit our website: www.rosiethereviewer.com
📸 Follow us on Instagram: @rosiethereviewerpodcast
💬 Join the conversation and leave a review — we’d love to hear your thoughts!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Welcome to Rosie the Reviewer. We're your host.
I'm Sam. And I'm Mark Jim.
And we like World War 2 media and we want to talk about it.
Welcome back to you, Rosie, the reviewer.
This week we are talking about Legras Cirque in English, The
Big Show, which was a movie thatcame out in 1950.
(00:23):
It was directed by George Piclayand written by Andre Castello,
George Piclay and Joseph Kessel.It's based on the 1948 memoir of
the same name by Pierre Klosterman, which sold roughly
3,000,000 copies. It's very, very famous in
France. And Klosterman himself was an
ace spider pilot during World War Two.
He flew over 400 missions and heclaims 33 air to air combat
(00:44):
victories. Now, one thing you should know
about Pierre, the Guardian callshis memoir shot through with
romantic inaccuracy. And that seems to be a little
bit true. So we think maybe his air to air
victories are more likely to be around the 18 mark instead of
the 33 mark. But he did destroy 225 trucks,
72 locomotives, 5 tanks and two torpedo boats.
(01:07):
And by all accounts, he was a tremendous pilot.
So no shade. He was just a guy who
embellished a little bit like a lot of these guys.
What did you think of the movie?The movie was a challenge for me
because I feel like we should mention this.
The movie is only available in French without subtitles, and
Mara Sam speaks a little bit to a lot of French.
(01:28):
I speak very French. That was a fun little challenge
for me. I did enjoy the movie, but not a
whole lot of specific things happen in the movie.
It's just a lot of people going on missions, fly boys being fly
boys and occasionally hitting ona very pretty lady.
But yeah, it's not bad. I find it interesting.
(01:51):
Maybe because it's French too, Idon't know.
That kind of added another dimension for me.
But I am a little bit jealous because you read the book and
the book sounds amazing. Yeah, the book is really good.
So I read it in the original French, so I can't speak for the
English translation, but Pierre was a pretty good writer.
I mean he was an educated guy. We'll talk about it a bit later
(02:12):
about his post war career and that kind of stuff.
But he was an aeronautical engineer and so he obviously
knows quite a thought about the planes that he's flying in.
And he's great at describing dogfights and bomb runs and all
that kind of stuff. But he's also really good at
telling little self deprecating stories about himself in a
really funny way. He's really great at describing
(02:33):
the more somber moments, the emotional difficulties that him
and his friends went through, the less fun things that
happened to them during the war.It's a really enjoyable memoir.
I would say it's probably entered my top five of World War
2 memoirs that I've read. So I really enjoyed that.
Yeah. But yeah, I thought that the
movie could have been way betterbased on how good the memoir
(02:54):
was. The movie does use a few clips
from real dogfights and such that took place during the war.
They took some from German propaganda films, they believe,
so there is some real footage. I don't feel like they made that
great of use of it or fitted in as well as they could have.
And I also found the movie kind of samey.
All they do is they go on a mission and then they go on
(03:15):
another mission and then they goon another mission and there's
nothing appreciably that kind ofdifferentiates them from each
other. And the book had so many big
swings from a funny moment to a really sad moment, and was
really kind of imbued with this sense of who KF Klosterman was
as a person. And I found that you didn't
really get that so much in the movie.
It was kind of hard to tell the characters apart.
(03:37):
I don't think the acting was tremendous.
So yeah, overall probably not a huge fan of the movie, but the
book is great. All the white guys definitely
all look the same, especially. Black and white, y'all.
The three friends, the three kind of main characters of the
movie, one of them is much shorter than the other two.
So in my mind it was like, that's the short one.
(03:58):
Like I'm keeping track. I know who he is, but then
there's big chunks in the movie where he's not with the other
two. And I was like, is that the
short one? Without being able to compare
him to the other two, I have no idea.
Yeah, I feel like the movie kindof lacked in storytelling
overall. A lot of stuff just happens, but
there's not really a reason for a lot of it.
(04:19):
We're in good movie seeker motivations and all that sort of
stuff when you get none of that in this movie.
So they didn't seem to be tryingto create a narrative with the
beginning and a middle and a climax and an end.
It was just like, here's a bunchof stuff that happened.
Yeah, I did laugh at the the Brits and this.
The Brits and this are funny. They speak in a very strange.
(04:40):
I'm really confused by this. I don't know if that's how they
spoke, but they don't do the modern movies anymore.
The Brits speak British but veryslowly and it made me laugh.
Well, The thing is, so you were talking about how this movie is
not subtitled, so it's all in French?
Well, well, there's also no option if French people are
watching this and they don't speak English.
(05:01):
The English is not subtitled forFrench people either.
So I think the British actors had to speak slowly for people
who maybe don't speak English that well to understand them.
And there's also chunks of the movie in German that's not
subtitled. I was like, wow, they really
didn't make this very accessiblefor anyone.
But like, for me, it kind of it gave the movie a sense of
mystery that maybe wasn't there in the movie.
(05:25):
A great sense of mystery becauseyou didn't know what the fuck
was happening. No, some wrote notes for me
before I watched the movie because she watched it before me
so I could just kind of read along with her notes.
That's the movie. What's going?
I know friends, but it's hard tounderstand in a movie for sure.
(05:45):
The sound quality isn't great. They speak super quickly.
Yeah, there was definitely a couple of scenes where I had to
slow it down to like .75 to kindof pick up what they were
saying. So it's definitely also, I mean,
for me, I'm so used to listeningto people speak with a French
Canadian accent, then I'm listening to real French people
speak in the 1950s. I'm like, what takes my brain
(06:08):
second to catch up? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
All right, let's get into the plot.
The movie opens as many do, withan opening card.
The opening card reads the errors of this movie live.
(06:28):
Except for beautiful music composite and one of my friends.
Their story is presented. Here is a loyal recounting of
the most rigorous truth, which is a quad book your Class 1.
The movie is dedicated to the memory of the first alien
Princess Libra. They wanted Armistice only after
victory. The Free French Air Force was
(06:51):
established in Britain in June of 1940, around the time of the
fall of France. As you can imagine, a lot of
French airmen made it out of France.
They still wanted to participatein the war.
So it eventually consisted of 11squadrons which were attached to
the RAF, the Royal Air Force, and they participated in the
North African campaign in Italy and all across northwestern
(07:11):
Europe. And there were also Free French
bomber. Groups, I feel like this is
similar to kind of have some of the Polish libraries during the
area. So it's like a little attachment
to the Brits. So they were flying from the UK
at this point, right at the beginning, yeah.
Exactly. And obviously the French were
being more the Free French. I guess we're being led by
(07:33):
Charles de Gaulle, who is based in London at this point.
And yeah, actually met Charles de Gaulle a couple of times.
And one time when he met him, hehad just gotten promoted to
Lieutenant. I think he had just been
commissioned as an officer. And so he bought this fancy
little stick to carry around so he could look fancy and cool.
Anyway, he met Charles de Gaulleand Charles de Gaulle razed the
(07:55):
shit out of him for carrying that stick around.
He's like, I don't think that's part of your uniform, it looks
bad. Was there watching and just made
fun of him, of course. I feel like Pierre is the kind
of God to humble behind him. Edmondson just to go.
Yeah, although by by all accounts it was, you know, it
was a bit of an embarrassing, cringe worthy experience for
him. So after this opening guard we
(08:15):
start in Beacon Hill, England in1943.
We meet our three main characters as they are having
their photo taken with the rest of the Free French pilot.
The main characters are beautiful and Jacques Demera,
(08:37):
they're kind of what messing around and as they're out there
getting their picture taken, a young woman in a women's Army
Corps called Patricia, who's played by Pamela Skiff, happens
by with her uncle, the British commander, and all the young men
get their flirt on and they're very annoying with.
Her, yes, Patricia, she's in theWomen's Army Corps and she
(08:59):
actually works when they go up on missions.
She works in the control room. So we'll see her a bit more of
this movie. We'll see her on the.
Phone we will. Yes, I know that all the
characters in this movie we're supposed to be based on real
people, but having read the memoir I know who Jacques is
based on because he was basically Piaz best friend ride
or die during the war. I have no idea who Jean is
(09:20):
supposed to be based on, but I guess it doesn't really matter.
He's probably just an amalgam ofreal people.
But to give you some back story on Pierre, he was raised in
Brazil in a French diplomatic family.
He studied aeronautical engineering in the US and got
his pilot's license in 1940 whenhe was 19.
He applied but was denied entry into the French Air Force in
1940. And then a little while later,
(09:42):
his father wrote to him at college and said, look, you need
to go to Brazil. Get your mother, bring her to
Brazzaville. If you recall, I think we talked
about Brazzaville in the Casablanca episode.
That was the capital of Free France in Africa.
That's where Charles de Gaulle was, and a lot of these guys
were. And so his dad being a diplomat
was like, go get your mom, bringher to Brazzaville.
And at this point, Piaf had beenreading about the exploits of
(10:05):
the RAF in the news, the Battle of Britain and all that stuff.
And it settled him. He was going to leave school and
he's going to fly Spitfires and he's really looking forward to
it. So he joined the Free French
Forces in the UK in March 1942, obviously had to do some
training and then he was posted to 341 Squadron RAF in January
of 1940 3. I mean, can you blame him if you
(10:25):
seen a Spitfire? It looks so cool.
If I was a boy and I was 19, I'dbe like, yeah, I don't want to
fly a Spitfire. Yeah, well, OK, so he gets to
the UK first of all, any of these French pilots who show up
to fly, they have to go through this whole interrogation process
because they could be vicious people, traders and spies,
right. So he has to, he goes through
(10:47):
all of this interrogation and they're like, OK, fine, you can
fly. Well, now you gotta, we know you
have your pilot's license, but we want to see what you can do.
So he's getting ready to take upthis examiner guy in the plane
so he can show his flying skills.
And the guy says try not to scare me too much, but the
engine is super, super loud and Pierre can't really hear him.
(11:09):
So he mishears it as try to scare me.
And so he takes the guy up, he does a barrel roll, he's doing
this and that. He gets back down to the ground.
The guy's like, you can fly, butnot in a plane that has me in it
ever again. Well, I guess they learned that
Pierre wasn't afraid of being daring and dashing in his plane.
(11:30):
Yeah, he had No Fear. Like, that's for sure.
So the French violence head up on a mission.
We don't really know what the fuck they're doing.
They don't really say. They just got up on a mission
and we see a couple of shots skipping back and forth between
the planes, which I think we both see them in their cockpit.
As well as the sexual footage from planes and Mission Control
(11:55):
where the English are very annoyed with the French speaking
out for the radio. And they're like, shut up,
bloody Frenchman. And they just kind of go on a
mission and come back. And to blow off steam.
Later that night, everybody gathers for a party in a mess
hall where Pure and Jack are both still very taken by
Patricia. And they both hit on her, but
(12:16):
Jack wins out and he wins her affections.
Yeah, Patricia is not a real person.
Yeah, doesn't talk about women very much in his book.
Wikipedia says he got married during the war, but there's no
mention of it in his memoir, so I don't know.
They must have added her just tokind of appeal to a broader
audience, is what I'm thinking. Yeah, I mean, I think you
(12:37):
probably need to have a female character in there.
It helps have some eye candy. There's also a story in the book
where Piazza's friend Jacques isdating this woman, and they're
serving way up in the Orkneys atthis point, right?
They started big in hell. They go up to the Orkneys.
A little while later, they're down and Brighton again.
So they're kind of moving all over the place throughout their
careers in the army. But they're up in the Orkneys,
(12:58):
and Jacques hears that this woman he's been sleeping with is
going to get married. And he's like, I got to stop
her. And he was like, how are you
going to stop her? We're up in the back of beyond.
And Jacques is like, yeah, for me.
Your best friend, Jacques, wouldyou please go to the base
commander and ask if I can borrow his personal plane?
And Pierre is sort of the spokesman slash leader of the
(13:20):
Free French guys who are in thissquadron.
And he's like, dude, he's not going to let you borrow your
plane. And Jacques is like, do it for
me, I'm in love. Yeah, please.
So yeah, goes to the base commander.
And he's like, honestly, I thinkthe guy was just so stunned by
my audacity that he said yes. So, Jack, NPR take the plane.
At one point, they run out of gas, so they're late bringing
(13:42):
the plane back. Yeah, it gets in trouble.
Jacques never does manage to stop this woman from marrying
this guy. Anyway, It's like this whole
story that they tell and it's just shenanigans.
Where are the Orkneys? Is that Scotland?
Yeah, like way up north, all right.
Yeah, They were watching over a naval base up there, I believe.
Sometimes you tell me stories from the park and I'm like, how
(14:04):
are these men serious fly boys? Like, how are these actual
fighter pilots? They are boys.
They are acting like boys. They really are.
And I also think because their job was so dangerous that it was
a work hard, play hard situationwhere they would really blow off
steam and extravagant style as well.
(14:25):
But yeah, yeah, he initially flew Spitfires.
Sometimes he would fly two or three missions a day if the
weather was cooperating. So that's how he got up to 400
plus missions. And he participated in every
brand of fighter plane mission you can think of.
So he did dive bombing runs. He did bomber escort, he did
Recon flights, sweeps, patrols, ground target attacks.
He, as I said, served for a period up north in the Orkneys.
(14:48):
He also participated in the bombing of V1 installations.
He flew coverage in the Normandylandings in late 1944.
He trained on and made the switch to Typhoons, which were
British ground attack aircraft that were in heavy use in the
later part of the war because they could shoot down V ones.
And they were also known as a tank destroyer, so they could
destroy tanks from the air. And he also flew Tempest, which
(15:11):
were kind of like a redesigned version of the Typhoon.
And they were the fastest pistonengine fighter of World War 2 at
low altitudes, but they were kind of tricky to handle.
And he describes it in the book.Having to learn how to fly
Tempest was quite a change from flying Spitfires.
That's what he did basically during the war.
I feel like most people will know, but just in case if you
(15:31):
want is a rocket, yes, like a big massive rocket.
Like I'm not fun rocket. I mean no, rockets are fun when
they're in the hands of the enemy, but just saying.
Yeah. Well, and if you think about it,
think about how fast the Typhoonwould have to fly to be able to
shoot down AV1 rocket like thesethings really got going.
(15:52):
Yeah, like I've seen pictures ofall these fighter planes.
They look mega fast like I'm just like I can't imagine being
a one. But thanks for the I don't have
to imagine. I don't have to be a 1.
So this is Tim already kind of financed.
They go on a bunch of missions in this movie.
So when they go on another one, and this time Jack has playing
(16:13):
trouble on the way back and he isn't able to jump out in time.
So he has a lucky landing and hegoes to a hospital.
Patricia visits him there, visits him in the hospital.
He's staying with him all night.It's correctly.
And then Jacques decides that hedoesn't want to stay in the
hospital and he goes on a date with Patricia instead, and the
other two, Jean and Pierre, get drunk and steal a car, which
(16:38):
sounds really smart. The next morning they lie about
it and they also somehow do not get in trouble, but they do take
the nick out of some empties by like, messing them about.
It's really kind of a silly thing.
Yeah, in the book there are two New Zealand pilots under his
(16:59):
command later in the war who do this, but it seems like they
just took it and assigned it twoother characters, which is fine.
It's more fun. But there is actually a story in
the book where when they were stationed up in the Orkneys,
lots of times the weather would just be too terrible in the
winter to fly. And so they would get really
bored. So their CEO was like, all
right, what we're going to do iseveryone's going to go to the
(17:21):
countryside and we're going to give you a head start.
And then we're going to send theMPs after you.
And whoever doesn't get caught the longest wins.
And really, not very in the spirit of things, Calf and
Jacques decide they're going to go into a pub instead, kind of
hiding in the woods and, you know, doing the what they're
supposed to be doing. And so they're in there and they
get shitface drunk. And the MPs eventually show up
(17:42):
because they've been gone for hours.
And everyone thinks that they frozen to death.
And Pierre is so drunk, he's like, face planning.
But Jacques has the presence of mind to buy a bottle of booze
for the CEO to sort of smooth the blow when they get back.
Yeah. And so they get back, and the
CEO is like, why didn't you justdo the maneuver?
And they were like, well, Sir, we're French.
(18:03):
If we got shot down over France,we'll just go to the pub and
wait for the resistance to come get us.
Again, these boys are so inserious in real life like in
the movie, it's not that bad. I feel like the truth is
stranger and non fiction in thiscase.
Yeah absolutely. So surprised.
They go on yet another mission but this time one of the three,
(18:25):
Jean, doesn't make it back. His plane is crashed in Normandy
and he survived, but his plane is on fire and so is his face.
But just apparently he looks kind of messed up.
But he's saved by two French millions, including a person who
doesn't really like the Nazis. He's played by Eddie Ward Dummel
(18:47):
and they help him and Joan is mostly worried that he's blind.
But he doesn't want to go to a hospital because he wants to go
back to England and escape. He wants to escape back to
England via Spain, so they put him on a train to Spain.
Yeah, apparently Edouard Delmon was a well known French
character actor. Yeah, I think you can kind of
(19:08):
tell he choose the scenery a little bit, but he's kind of
fun. Yeah, I loved it.
He's got these huge sunglasses on because his eyes are fucked,
right? And they're he's just standing
in the train station, so conspicuous.
So with his sunglasses on, I waslike, good luck.
Are you a spy? You look like Ron.
Yeah, I don't have any information about, I mean, I
don't really know who Jacques orwho's Jon, sorry, it's supposed
(19:28):
to be based on. And I don't really have any
information about Jacques getting shot down either.
Which is not to say it didn't happen, it just didn't get
mentioned in Ciao's memoir. But Ciao himself did get shot
down flying over Germany in March of 1945.
Luckily he was able to get back to his own lines and he only
spent a week in the hospital with a leg wounds.
But when he got back, his wing mates wrote him a big sign that
(19:48):
says leave it to me, it's a piece of cake, which they swear
he said over the radio before hecharged in to a situation that
ended up getting shot down. And he was like, I don't think I
said that. And they were like, you
definitely said that. And they just razzed him about
it for the rest of the war. It sounds like him.
It sounds like a bit of a like abit of a big talker.
Like, big talk, but real fun too.
(20:11):
Like, if you're going to be in awar, thank God you've got these
meds trying to make it slightly easier and annoying.
Yeah. Next, Jack and Pierre get offers
this Commission. So they got very 50 new
uniforms. And Jack takes Patricia on
another day. But Patricia's uncle warns her
about him, but she doesn't really listen because she's in
(20:34):
love. Yeah, I had a shoehorn romancing
at all. Yeah.
What kind of kissing did they do?
Was it face sucking? I didn't notice.
I think so, but it wasn't enoughto make so must not have been
that bad. Maybe the French are just better
at it. They do get a genre of kissing
named after them. I mean, it is French kissing, so
(20:54):
the next bit is kind of fun. The French commander, Captain
Mous shot, played by Jean Christian, he's planning which
is where the name is from, and they are going to try and take
out the Richtofen wing, which isa wing of German fights or
pilots. And it's so important that Mous
shot. He wants to be the lead in this,
(21:16):
like he doesn't have to be what he wants.
Yeah, the Rexhoffen Wing. It was a very successful German
fighter wing during World War Two.
It was named after the Red Baronfrom World War One.
Everyone recalls the good old Red Baron.
Oh, he was a big time World War One flying ace on the German
side. He's, I mean, he's the only one
he could name. OK, it he's actually, oh, in the
(21:37):
Snoopy cartoons, he's always trying to shoot down the Red
Baron. I'm sorry my daughter this
flawed. I don't know any of this.
The wing flew both Metro SchmidtBF1O Nines and Spock Wolf One
90s and was basically a menace on the English Channel.
And so it was a major priority of the RAF to try and get rid of
them, dissuade them from being such pains in the asses.
(22:00):
So there's a specific airstrip mentioned in the book called
Thick Viv, and this was a Frenchairstrip that was taken over by
the Germans when they took over France in 1940.
They used it till July of 1943, and then they ended up having to
evacuate it because it was deemed too exposed to English
bombing because it was so close to the coast.
And they used it afterward, but only for transit and repair.
(22:21):
But it was one of the airstrips used to great effect by the
Richtofen unit to hammer the British and Canadians at Dieppe,
which we have mentioned before. It's like whenever we mentioned
something that we talked about before, I'm like, I know this, I
know this. It's so nice.
Yeah. So naturally this is followed up
by short big mission day. We get some German DOB where
(22:44):
there's no subtitles again, but unfortunately a couple the
Spitfires go down over Normandy,including Jack.
He encounters a priest played byPierre Larkey.
Larkey, I don't know who had himfrom the Germans.
And a familiar method by now, because it's in the coffin.
And Jack, like John, is very determined to get back home or
(23:07):
to get back to England. Yeah, the real Mushat was shot
down on the 27th of August 1943.PF talks about it pretty
extensively in the book. It seems like what happened was
he got separated from the rest of the group.
He was fighting a huge number ofenemy and he got separated.
(23:27):
And then it's kind of unclear what happened next because they
didn't find his body for quite some time.
But it seems like what happened was he went down in the North
Sea, way further north than theywere expecting.
And Pierre talks about how he thinks maybe there was some
battle fatigue involved because based on what he heard about
where the body was found and what had happened to the plane,
etcetera, he didn't really thinkthat a pilot as good as Mushat
(23:50):
would just go down like that unless there were extenuating
circumstances. And it seems like Pierre found
this to be very understandable. He was like, honestly, I'm
shocked that more of us lose it a little bit.
Mushat's last words that were heard on the radio where I am
alone with the bombers. And yeah, his Diaries were
published in 1949 in English. They're called the Mushat
Diaries. And you can have a look.
(24:11):
I believe they're available in bookstores.
I feel like I'm alone with the bombers.
Sounds kind of haunting in the way there's no one else here but
these bombers. Yeah, it's inevitable.
Like there's an inevitability tothat in some way.
Yeah, for sure. That makes it back to England
first and D-Day is in the air and Pierre is kind of a lucky
(24:35):
son of a bitch because he's my slight leader with the number 3
squadron of the RAF. Yeah, Pierre got promoted a few
times in real life, but not until 1945.
I think this is just the movie playing a little fast and loose
with timelines, but that's fine.He has a little conversation
with Jean, and Jean's still bucked up, right?
His eyes are not so good. They're healing.
He's not blind anymore, but he'snot doing great.
(24:55):
And thinking back over the movie, I was like, is this the
last time we see Jean? Like did he just go home?
I was very confused. I don't think it's explained at
all. You just you got a sense that
he's no longer able to fly, probably because of his eyes,
but they don't say so. They just have a conversation
and then we never see him again.It was especially tough for me
because he was the one I found most recognizable of the three.
(25:19):
Well, because he was blind with same glasses on.
No, because he was tall and he had dark hair and I was like
once he was gone. The other two I'm like, these
guys are too similar. I have no idea which one is Piaf
and which one is Jean. I agree that you also like kind
of the same smooth, and I like these really charming fighter
pilots and they've got the same hair.
(25:41):
So we don't see John again, but Jack does make it back, and it's
clear that everyone is starting to get a little bit itchy about
all their friends dying. The mood kind of changes in this
part of the movie. They're getting new pilots who
are young men with very little flying experience.
And it's around this time that the squadron moves across the
(26:02):
Channel back to France. Yeah, Jeff talks in the book
about how before he ever went towar, he had logged hundreds of
hours of flight time. And towards the end they were
getting replacement pilots that had flown A Spitfire for like
one or two hours. So then they were just like,
yeah. So within a few weeks of D-Day
in the summer of 44, the Free French squadrons were once again
(26:25):
stationed on the continent. And actually, the week after
D-Day, Piaf was one of the firstFree French pilots that touched
down on French soil in four years.
They teamed up with interior French forces units.
These were ex Air Force resistance members flying
captured aircraft, and they participated in the liberation
of the rest of France. And they continued to fly
missions until the end of the ORwhen they were incorporated back
into the regular French Air Force.
(26:46):
And with regard to Pierre, he got his Distinguished Flying
Cross in July of 44. And shortly after, they also
sent him on a little mental health break because they were
like, wow, Pierre, we can reallytell that you don't care if
you'll ever die at this point. You need to go work in general
staff for a little while and notfly anymore planes.
It's rough, man. I mean, they've done so many
(27:08):
missions here and so many peoplehave not come back, so I can't
really abandoned. I wonder like when is my luck
going to run out? Thinking the chances of me
surviving statistically and getting smaller and smaller and
smaller. Yeah, exactly.
And there are not only physical effects of anxiety and trauma,
but there's physical effects from flying at high altitudes in
(27:31):
these little planes, from dive bombing.
Some of the guys would get like bleeding in their lungs and that
kind of stuff. And so it was the whole thing.
It was not great for your healthto fly these fighter planes.
They'll say that. But there's like, that's true
for most, the mess of the roar. Yeah, No, not good for the
health in general. Yeah, there's a story in the
book where there is a young pilot and it's his first mission
(27:53):
or something like that, and he'sflying into the base and his
plane has been badly damaged by flax.
So his landing gear is fucked up.
Like it's stuck half out. And Pierre's CEO comes to get
him and is like, look, can you come up into the tower and talk
to this guy on the radio and tell him how to land this plane?
Because I don't know how he's going to put it down.
So Pierre goes up into the towerand he's like, did you try try
this? And the guy's like, yeah, I
(28:14):
tried that. And he's like, well, did you try
this? So he tries.
That doesn't work. And at this point, the young
pilot is starting to panic. And because he's got to put this
plane down because it's really fucked up, he's like, well, I'm
just going to try and land it. And Pierre was like, well, you
can't land it like that because you can't bring the wheels up
into a belly landing, and you can't bring the wheels down and
land it properly. But at this point, the pilot has
(28:36):
turned his radio off and Pierre was like, I was trying to tell
him to jump, like he should havetaken his parachute and jumped
out of the plane and just ditched it.
But the pilot tried to land the plane and as you can imagine, it
did not go well. There was a massive explosion
and Pierre basically got to watch them drag this body out of
the fire at the end and it was still twitching.
No, that reminds me a little bitof that one moment in Memphis
(29:01):
Belle. We're not listening to the guy
die on the radio. It's a similar ride for sure.
That's horrible. How do you deal with that kind
of stuff? I guess you don't really, which
is why they all needed to go on leave.
Yeah, and he was working in general staff for five or six
months. He was on leave from flying, so
clearly they thought he needed it.
(29:23):
Yeah, and like we already said, the movie has a change of tone
somewhere halfway through and itkind of continues when the boys
not going great for these Frenchguys.
The wink of mine got shot down and yeah, got promote it again.
Shark has been a bit upset and morose about not being able to
see Patricia, but she's still back in the mission, controlling
(29:46):
for the next mission over Germany, which is a big mission.
Yeah, I mean, obviously Patriciastayed behind in England when
the French troops moved across the Channel, so that's why he
hasn't seen her in a while. There's a story in the book
about when Pierre was promoted to acting Wing Commander, his
CEO handed him a huge stack of late paperwork and said try not
to die. I'm tired of replacing the Wing
Commander every week. Thanks.
(30:08):
Yeah, he's like, great. I guess I'll just go and tackle
all this paperwork that the other guys didn't do because
they didn't live long enough. Yeah, it's very much effective
for sure. Yeah.
The next mission we see is one Over The Rhine in Germany on May
3rd, 1945. It's the last day of air combat
and Jacques got shot down. He says goodbye to Patricia over
(30:32):
the radio, calling her darling. It's very kind of sad.
It is very sad, but I will admitI got a little bit of a feeling
about that one. But good news for Jacques heads
real Jacques survived the war and lived to old age.
So he did not die in this way. Yeah.
He actually found out in 1990 that he may have led the patrol
(30:52):
that critically wounded Irwin Rommel on July of 44.
The way Pierre tells this story in the book, he definitely gives
Jacques a little bit more creditthan Jacques is perhaps entitled
to. But Pierre is usually pretty
good about that. Like, he'll brag about his own
exploits, but he also things up his friends too.
But basically what happened was Irwin Rommel was travelling in a
motorcade, a patrol possibly ledby Jacques Strafed the
(31:15):
motorcade. They hit the driver, the Jeep
that Rommel was travelling in flipped and threw him out of it.
And he got, he ended up with three skull fractures.
So those are obviously not greatfor your health.
And so Rommel was in a coma for a little while.
And then what ended up happeningwas he got implicated in this
plot to assassinate Hitler. And as he was recuperating at
(31:37):
home in Germany, that a couple of German agents came to his
house. And we're like, hey, look, we'll
bury you with military honors, and we won't let your family go
through public disgrace, but youhave to kill yourself for your
involvement in this plot. And so that seems what he did.
But yeah, shock possibly involved in critically injuring
Irwin Rommel right before his death.
Do we know where this was? Where the you probably do you
(32:01):
probably look this up? If not, I'm sorry for calling
you out, but where did the ramelthing happen?
Was in Normandy, yeah, but Rommel was in a coma for a
couple of days and then the Germans insisted on bringing him
back to be treated in a German hospital, which probably did not
help with the length of his convalescence.
Yeah, but then neither does the fact that they kind of wanted
(32:22):
him dead after that. For sure, yeah, him probably
killing himself was it was a major factor in him being dead
thankfully. We also get some good news
because we eventually reach BE Day in the movie.
There are celebrations on the radio, but none of the airmen
seem to be having a very good time here.
Reminisces about the loss of allhis friends.
(32:45):
Goes on one last flight to say goodbye to his beloved planes
and it's very clear that he's not sure what he's going to do
next or how to actually go back to normal life.
Yeah, he's talks in the book about the last time he flies his
Tempest. After he lands it, the ground
crew sees him crying in the cockpit, so they all give him a
(33:05):
few minutes alone to compose himself.
Oh bless. When Sam was reading the book,
she was sending me like French quotes from the book.
I'm better at reading French than I am at listening to it, so
(33:26):
I could understand most of those.
And it's got some real hard hitter throughout this book.
There are some good quotes in it, and I think you're going to
read 1 for us in English. So this is from VE Day, he says.
(33:48):
Then came the Armistice, like a heavy door closing, 8
incomprehensible days and indefinable mixture of joys and
regrets, noisy displays interrupted by great
intermittent calms, and above all this unaccustomed silence,
thick weighing on the airfield, on the tarpaulin covered planes,
the dead squadrons and the emptyrunways.
The relaxation of the tensed nerves was terrible, painful as
(34:10):
a birth. It was enough to make you
scream. Beautiful.
If you know any French, please read it in French because it's
even more beautiful in French. Yeah, it's really lovely.
There's another bit, too, where they're getting ready to go
home. He's in the bar with one of his
friends who is also Aceo, and it's just the two of them in the
bar, but he's talking about how he can sense the ghost of the
(34:32):
other guys. So he says.
I looked up at Ken Hughes again.No need for words.
We understood each other half anhour, an hour perhaps past.
And then I swear I suddenly feltthat they were all there around
us, and the shadows and the cigarette smoke, like sad kids
who had been unjustly punished. Mackenzie, Jimmy Kelly, Mouse
Manson, Little kid, Bone Shepherd, Brooker, Gordon, and
(34:54):
also dark uniforms with tarnished gold braid who would
never see France again. Mushat, Mesali, Berro, Piero de
Guy, all of them, all of them who had left one fine morning
with their Spitfires and their Tempest and who had not
returned. Well, Pierre said Ken, that's
the end of it. They won't need us anymore.
We went to bed and I closed the door gently so as not to wake
the bartender who is sleeping onhis stool, and also so as not to
(35:17):
disturb the others. It's beautiful, like it's such a
poetic way of describing those feelings.
Yeah. And if you think about it too
much of this book is based on letters that he wrote home.
And so this is a young man of 2425 years old writing this
stuff home to his parents, for example.
It's beautifully written in parts for sure.
(35:38):
Yeah, I can't really say that this translates really well to
the movie. Like the movie's pretty
straight. It just happens.
There's no project anything in there.
Yeah, I agree. They definitely didn't really
get the the spirit of calf, I would say.
No, I just they got a little bitof the bravado, but I feel like
they give most of that to Jacques rather than Claire
(36:01):
himself. Yeah, I agree.
In the immediate aftermath of the war, Pierre Zluck started to
run out, and he seemed to be aware of this.
So there was a big victory parade where planes from all
(36:23):
different Allied groups were flying over Bremerhaven.
And Pierre, first of all, was like, I don't think this is a
good idea. All these plane groups that have
never flown together before don't necessarily know how to
fly in formation with each other.
But everyone was like, no, we'regoing to do it.
It's going to be great. So he's up there in his Tempest.
And what had happened was one ofthe other guys in his wing, what
(36:44):
they're supposed to do is they're supposed to jettison
their extra gas tank. And if you don't do that before
it runs out, what will happen isthe engine will just cut.
And so one of the other planes fell onto the plane that was
flying right behind Piaf. And that plane ended up clipping
PF and Piaf had to jump from hisplane and his parachute and
(37:05):
ended up being wounded and had asuper close call.
And one of the other pilots died, unfortunately.
Oh no. Yeah.
And then, so that was in May. And then in July he's in
Denmark. And the Danish king is like, oh,
will you fly over in your Tempest and do some tricks and,
you know, whatever. And so, yeah, I was like, sure,
why not? So he gets up in his Tempest
(37:26):
again and he ends up having someengine trouble.
And he describes the landing of that as the plane disintegrated
for half a kilometer. So he somehow walks away from
this without a scratch. And the Danish king is making
jokes about how lucky he is and how he escaped by the skin of
his teeth. But yeah, he seems to be pretty
(37:47):
aware that he's like, I don't know how many more of these I'm
going to get, you know? Yeah, I feel like why don't fade
any further? Just go home there.
Go. Yeah, there's one more story
that I thought was really interesting.
VA Day has happened. It's in the week after, you
know, it's like May 10th or 11thor something.
And he's on an airstrip with some of his guys and a group of
(38:12):
Measure Schmidt's just shows up and one of his sergeants is
like, well, holy shit, do we shoot at them?
And Piazza is like, well, no, the war's over.
Like try not to restart it. So all these Measure Schmidt's
land beautifully on the airstripexcept for the officers plane.
And when he lands it, he deliberately does this maneuver
where he like bounces one of thewings off the ground.
So he symbolically is deliveringhis plane not intact and he gets
(38:36):
out and he gives his Luger CPF as a symbolic we surrender sort
of thing. And it never occurred to me how
fighter plane squadrons would have surrendered at the end of
the war when everything was kindof chaotic.
And I guess that's one of the ways that they did it.
I don't know why but I just thought in my head that I just
went home, like OK bye. Yeah, I think particularly at
(38:59):
the end of the war, the Germans had really dispersed a lot of
their airfields because a lot ofthem had been badly damaged by
the Allies. And when they were making their
last ditch attempt, they were having to hide their planes in
the forest and in other places during the war, they built these
big underground plane factories and all kinds of things to
protect them from the Allies. And so I think by the end of the
(39:20):
war, the different squadrons andgroups were really spread out
all over the place. So it wasn't really a matter of
they're all in one place, they all go surrender together.
Right now they just have to go wherever they could reach to.
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Pierre, He was awarded
Distinguished Flying Cross. As we already mentioned.
He also got a bar for his DFC and I want to say April 1945 he
(39:44):
was. What does that mean?
It's like an additional they're like, hey, you get another one.
It's like you don't get 2:00 butyou get one with a bar on.
It he won an American Silver Star, he won the Croix de gaffe
with 19 Palms, and he won the Grand Croix Belle Jean Donaire,
so heavily decorated. After the war he worked as an
aeronautical engineer. He.
Served 8 terms in French parliament.
(40:05):
Really charismatic guy, well known in France.
He got really into deep sea fishing randomly.
That was his big hobby. He was married and he had three
sons. He was called up and he flew
again in 1956 and 57 during the Algerian War.
This was a colonial war where there were Algerian quote UN
quote rebels trying to get rid of the French colonial masters
(40:27):
that they had. There's a little segment at the
end of my copy of the Grand Cirque where Pierre talks a a
little bit about the Algerian War and it doesn't sound like he
enjoyed himself quite as much ashe did during the big show.
But yeah, like many war veterans, he became known for
his anti war beliefs later in life and he died on March 22nd,
2000. And.
Six, yeah. So he had a long life then?
(40:48):
Quite a long life. Yeah, he was 85, I think, when
he died. Yeah, the successful life as
well. Lots of things happened too.
I just want to talk real quicklyjust about the title, the big
show, the Grand Cirque. I've heard that use in synonym
just for the war in general. I think it's so interesting to
call it that, Like it's a show of force and a firepower, but
(41:13):
also it's also, what the heck are we doing it for A kind of
show sometimes, Like what? Whatever you've been fighting
for. Actually, I don't really know
what I want to say about it. I just wanted to mention it.
Yeah, right. At the end of the book, he has a
little passage where he sort of makes reference to the fact that
Le Graciuk, like the big shows, what they called World War 2 and
(41:36):
obviously a silk is also a circus.
And so this little passage he talks about, yeah, you know,
long after the circus is gone and they pack up the tent and,
and all that's left there is thepeg holes in the ground and
blah, blah, blah. He's like, eventually people
will forget about this. And yeah, so he does kind of
make reference to those kind of double meanings at the end.
Yeah. It's interesting.
I do wonder what this movie would have been if it had been
(41:59):
an American story. I feel like it would have been
much different. We talked about this a little
bit of mine and we kind of want another Pierre story, like a
bigger Pierre story for sure. Yeah.
I mean, I don't know who would make it, but I would love to see
this memoir where I get, you know, the Hollywood treatment I
get made into, like a big sweeping war epic.
(42:19):
I think it would be great. I'm just manifesting it now that
we're going to write the script and it's going to get picked up
by from what I'm just manifesting.
I'm just doing it absolutely. How hard can it be to write a
screenplay? I mean, that's what we thought
about starting up with Duster, to be fair.
So you never know. We have to read this.
(42:49):
We do. What, are we going to read it?
I don't know. Do.
You have any ideas? Repetitive missions out of 10.
That's threat. How many repetitive missions out
of 10 would you write this movie?
Gosh, y'all, I'm going to give this movie like 4 1/2 repetitive
missions out of 10. I thought it was fine when I
watched it, if I'm honest, because I watched it before I
read the book and I was like, yeah, this is all right.
(43:11):
I don't mind the combat scenes. It's very 1950s in this
shoehorned in romance. They're like, we can't make a
movie without a lady. And I mean, the female character
is not very deep by any means, but she is in there.
So there is that. And yeah.
And then I read the book and thebook was really good.
So then I was kind of thinking about all the ways that I would
(43:32):
make the movie differently if itwere me.
And yeah, so not that excited about it, but y'all go read the
book. Can't speak for the English
translation, but the French version is really good.
I would give the book like probably a nine repetitive
mission. So OK, I would give the movie
being also that I did not understand what they were
saying. I would give it probably also a
(43:54):
4 1/2 repetitive missions out of10.
It's not too long. It's not like super, super duper
long. So it's all right.
And like you said, there's some there's some good flying and
missions in there, but also they're all the same.
And I feel like what I'm kind ofmissing in this movie, some
sticks, it's not really. So yeah, not good, not great.
(44:17):
But also, I feel glad to have watched a French movie.
I like watching movies from different countries for sure.
I didn't mind the acting, but I also didn't love it.
So overall, just a bit about thewhole thing.
And I didn't notice how little music there is in this movie.
I feel like they didn't have thebudget to buy, like actual
(44:38):
music. Sometimes the music makes a
movie better than it than it is,but there's no music in this
bandy so. Yeah, and I think that that
plays into the kind of flatness of it, you know, narrative
flatness, emotional flatness. There aren't any really cool
cinematography moments and stuff.
(44:59):
It's just really, it's fine, butit's not.
It's no hell, you know? There's 49 shots of like 4
fighter aircraft just in the airdoing nothing but flying.
There's a lot of. There is, but I agree that I
think, I don't think we watched a French movie yet.
That was kind of fun. That was a perspective we didn't
get before. And I learned a lot about the
(45:21):
Free French that I didn't know that I thought was fascinating.
So I'm happy about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree.
I thought three-year learned quite a bit.
Thanks. Y'all, I subjected marks as so
much Piaf while I was reading this book.
I was like, here's another passage from Piaf, here's
another one. It was like 10 a day.
I was sending little snippets over.
But it's more if you get to talkabout it when you're reading, so
(45:44):
I agree. Speaking of reading, are you
reading anything? I'm reading Other than honorable
by Matt Hardman. I just started it last night.
I'm also reading a book. What a strange coincidence.
(46:04):
Crazy. I really like it so far.
I'm about a third of three and already and I quite like it.
It's fun. It's got good pacing, yeah.
Yeah, and I'm also reading Agents are, but normally I I
feel like I must have said it about four times on the podcast
already, but I'm still restoringthat.
Yeah, that one is on my docket. But I was laying in bed last
(46:27):
night and I had left my book in the other room, so I was like,
well, we're going to read something that I have available
on my phone. And I feel like this book is
good for like, when you want to engage your brain but also don't
want to have to pay too close attention.
I don't mean that in a negative brain.
I mean, not in a good brain. An entertaining book.
Yeah. Thanks everybody for listening.
(46:49):
You can find us wherever you getyour podcast and read us 5
slides. We would very much appreciate
it. You can follow us on Instagram
at Rosie the Reviewer Podcast, or actually, you can also visit
our website, rosiethereviewer.com For more
information. And you can send this episode
about our new favorite Pierre toyour friend because Pierre needs
(47:11):
more fans. So do that, please.
Yeah. It does need need more fans like
listen, this is a Pierre Klosterman fan page now.
He's so fun, I'm not even kidding.
Like if this hadn't been an American story, people would be
all over it, I'm pretty sure. So get on that and we'll see you
next week. Bye bye.
Welcome to Rosie the Reviewer. We're your host.
I'm Sam. And I'm Mark Jim.
And we like World War 2 media and we want to talk about it.
Welcome back to you, Rosie, the reviewer.
This week we are talking about Legras Cirque in English, The
Big Show, which was a movie thatcame out in 1950.
(00:23):
It was directed by George Piclayand written by Andre Castello,
George Piclay and Joseph Kessel.It's based on the 1948 memoir of
the same name by Pierre Klosterman, which sold roughly
3,000,000 copies. It's very, very famous in
France. And Klosterman himself was an
ace spider pilot during World War Two.
He flew over 400 missions and heclaims 33 air to air combat
(00:44):
victories. Now, one thing you should know
about Pierre, the Guardian callshis memoir shot through with
romantic inaccuracy. And that seems to be a little
bit true. So we think maybe his air to air
victories are more likely to be around the 18 mark instead of
the 33 mark. But he did destroy 225 trucks,
72 locomotives, 5 tanks and two torpedo boats.
(01:07):
And by all accounts, he was a tremendous pilot.
So no shade. He was just a guy who
embellished a little bit like a lot of these guys.
What did you think of the movie?The movie was a challenge for me
because I feel like we should mention this.
The movie is only available in French without subtitles, and
Mara Sam speaks a little bit to a lot of French.
(01:28):
I speak very French. That was a fun little challenge
for me. I did enjoy the movie, but not a
whole lot of specific things happen in the movie.
It's just a lot of people going on missions, fly boys being fly
boys and occasionally hitting ona very pretty lady.
But yeah, it's not bad. I find it interesting.
(01:51):
Maybe because it's French too, Idon't know.
That kind of added another dimension for me.
But I am a little bit jealous because you read the book and
the book sounds amazing. Yeah, the book is really good.
So I read it in the original French, so I can't speak for the
English translation, but Pierre was a pretty good writer.
I mean he was an educated guy. We'll talk about it a bit later
(02:12):
about his post war career and that kind of stuff.
But he was an aeronautical engineer and so he obviously
knows quite a thought about the planes that he's flying in.
And he's great at describing dogfights and bomb runs and all
that kind of stuff. But he's also really good at
telling little self deprecating stories about himself in a
really funny way. He's really great at describing
(02:33):
the more somber moments, the emotional difficulties that him
and his friends went through, the less fun things that
happened to them during the war.It's a really enjoyable memoir.
I would say it's probably entered my top five of World War
2 memoirs that I've read. So I really enjoyed that.
Yeah. But yeah, I thought that the
movie could have been way betterbased on how good the memoir
(02:54):
was. The movie does use a few clips
from real dogfights and such that took place during the war.
They took some from German propaganda films, they believe,
so there is some real footage. I don't feel like they made that
great of use of it or fitted in as well as they could have.
And I also found the movie kind of samey.
All they do is they go on a mission and then they go on
(03:15):
another mission and then they goon another mission and there's
nothing appreciably that kind ofdifferentiates them from each
other. And the book had so many big
swings from a funny moment to a really sad moment, and was
really kind of imbued with this sense of who KF Klosterman was
as a person. And I found that you didn't
really get that so much in the movie.
It was kind of hard to tell the characters apart.
(03:37):
I don't think the acting was tremendous.
So yeah, overall probably not a huge fan of the movie, but the
book is great. All the white guys definitely
all look the same, especially. Black and white, y'all.
The three friends, the three kind of main characters of the
movie, one of them is much shorter than the other two.
So in my mind it was like, that's the short one.
(03:58):
Like I'm keeping track. I know who he is, but then
there's big chunks in the movie where he's not with the other
two. And I was like, is that the
short one? Without being able to compare
him to the other two, I have no idea.
Yeah, I feel like the movie kindof lacked in storytelling
overall. A lot of stuff just happens, but
there's not really a reason for a lot of it.
(04:19):
We're in good movie seeker motivations and all that sort of
stuff when you get none of that in this movie.
So they didn't seem to be tryingto create a narrative with the
beginning and a middle and a climax and an end.
It was just like, here's a bunchof stuff that happened.
Yeah, I did laugh at the the Brits and this.
The Brits and this are funny. They speak in a very strange.
(04:40):
I'm really confused by this. I don't know if that's how they
spoke, but they don't do the modern movies anymore.
The Brits speak British but veryslowly and it made me laugh.
Well, The thing is, so you were talking about how this movie is
not subtitled, so it's all in French?
Well, well, there's also no option if French people are
watching this and they don't speak English.
(05:01):
The English is not subtitled forFrench people either.
So I think the British actors had to speak slowly for people
who maybe don't speak English that well to understand them.
And there's also chunks of the movie in German that's not
subtitled. I was like, wow, they really
didn't make this very accessiblefor anyone.
But like, for me, it kind of it gave the movie a sense of
mystery that maybe wasn't there in the movie.
(05:25):
A great sense of mystery becauseyou didn't know what the fuck
was happening. No, some wrote notes for me
before I watched the movie because she watched it before me
so I could just kind of read along with her notes.
That's the movie. What's going?
I know friends, but it's hard tounderstand in a movie for sure.
(05:45):
The sound quality isn't great. They speak super quickly.
Yeah, there was definitely a couple of scenes where I had to
slow it down to like .75 to kindof pick up what they were
saying. So it's definitely also, I mean,
for me, I'm so used to listeningto people speak with a French
Canadian accent, then I'm listening to real French people
speak in the 1950s. I'm like, what takes my brain
(06:08):
second to catch up? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
All right, let's get into the plot.
The movie opens as many do, withan opening card.
The opening card reads the errors of this movie live.
(06:28):
Except for beautiful music composite and one of my friends.
Their story is presented. Here is a loyal recounting of
the most rigorous truth, which is a quad book your Class 1.
The movie is dedicated to the memory of the first alien
Princess Libra. They wanted Armistice only after
victory. The Free French Air Force was
(06:51):
established in Britain in June of 1940, around the time of the
fall of France. As you can imagine, a lot of
French airmen made it out of France.
They still wanted to participatein the war.
So it eventually consisted of 11squadrons which were attached to
the RAF, the Royal Air Force, and they participated in the
North African campaign in Italy and all across northwestern
(07:11):
Europe. And there were also Free French
bomber. Groups, I feel like this is
similar to kind of have some of the Polish libraries during the
area. So it's like a little attachment
to the Brits. So they were flying from the UK
at this point, right at the beginning, yeah.
Exactly. And obviously the French were
being more the Free French. I guess we're being led by
(07:33):
Charles de Gaulle, who is based in London at this point.
And yeah, actually met Charles de Gaulle a couple of times.
And one time when he met him, hehad just gotten promoted to
Lieutenant. I think he had just been
commissioned as an officer. And so he bought this fancy
little stick to carry around so he could look fancy and cool.
Anyway, he met Charles de Gaulleand Charles de Gaulle razed the
(07:55):
shit out of him for carrying that stick around.
He's like, I don't think that's part of your uniform, it looks
bad. Was there watching and just made
fun of him, of course. I feel like Pierre is the kind
of God to humble behind him. Edmondson just to go.
Yeah, although by by all accounts it was, you know, it
was a bit of an embarrassing, cringe worthy experience for
him. So after this opening guard we
(08:15):
start in Beacon Hill, England in1943.
We meet our three main characters as they are having
their photo taken with the rest of the Free French pilot.
The main characters are beautiful and Jacques Demera,
(08:37):
they're kind of what messing around and as they're out there
getting their picture taken, a young woman in a women's Army
Corps called Patricia, who's played by Pamela Skiff, happens
by with her uncle, the British commander, and all the young men
get their flirt on and they're very annoying with.
Her, yes, Patricia, she's in theWomen's Army Corps and she
(08:59):
actually works when they go up on missions.
She works in the control room. So we'll see her a bit more of
this movie. We'll see her on the.
Phone we will. Yes, I know that all the
characters in this movie we're supposed to be based on real
people, but having read the memoir I know who Jacques is
based on because he was basically Piaz best friend ride
or die during the war. I have no idea who Jean is
(09:20):
supposed to be based on, but I guess it doesn't really matter.
He's probably just an amalgam ofreal people.
But to give you some back story on Pierre, he was raised in
Brazil in a French diplomatic family.
He studied aeronautical engineering in the US and got
his pilot's license in 1940 whenhe was 19.
He applied but was denied entry into the French Air Force in
1940. And then a little while later,
(09:42):
his father wrote to him at college and said, look, you need
to go to Brazil. Get your mother, bring her to
Brazzaville. If you recall, I think we talked
about Brazzaville in the Casablanca episode.
That was the capital of Free France in Africa.
That's where Charles de Gaulle was, and a lot of these guys
were. And so his dad being a diplomat
was like, go get your mom, bringher to Brazzaville.
And at this point, Piaf had beenreading about the exploits of
(10:05):
the RAF in the news, the Battle of Britain and all that stuff.
And it settled him. He was going to leave school and
he's going to fly Spitfires and he's really looking forward to
it. So he joined the Free French
Forces in the UK in March 1942, obviously had to do some
training and then he was posted to 341 Squadron RAF in January
of 1940 3. I mean, can you blame him if you
(10:25):
seen a Spitfire? It looks so cool.
If I was a boy and I was 19, I'dbe like, yeah, I don't want to
fly a Spitfire. Yeah, well, OK, so he gets to
the UK first of all, any of these French pilots who show up
to fly, they have to go through this whole interrogation process
because they could be vicious people, traders and spies,
right. So he has to, he goes through
(10:47):
all of this interrogation and they're like, OK, fine, you can
fly. Well, now you gotta, we know you
have your pilot's license, but we want to see what you can do.
So he's getting ready to take upthis examiner guy in the plane
so he can show his flying skills.
And the guy says try not to scare me too much, but the
engine is super, super loud and Pierre can't really hear him.
(11:09):
So he mishears it as try to scare me.
And so he takes the guy up, he does a barrel roll, he's doing
this and that. He gets back down to the ground.
The guy's like, you can fly, butnot in a plane that has me in it
ever again. Well, I guess they learned that
Pierre wasn't afraid of being daring and dashing in his plane.
(11:30):
Yeah, he had No Fear. Like, that's for sure.
So the French violence head up on a mission.
We don't really know what the fuck they're doing.
They don't really say. They just got up on a mission
and we see a couple of shots skipping back and forth between
the planes, which I think we both see them in their cockpit.
As well as the sexual footage from planes and Mission Control
(11:55):
where the English are very annoyed with the French speaking
out for the radio. And they're like, shut up,
bloody Frenchman. And they just kind of go on a
mission and come back. And to blow off steam.
Later that night, everybody gathers for a party in a mess
hall where Pure and Jack are both still very taken by
Patricia. And they both hit on her, but
(12:16):
Jack wins out and he wins her affections.
Yeah, Patricia is not a real person.
Yeah, doesn't talk about women very much in his book.
Wikipedia says he got married during the war, but there's no
mention of it in his memoir, so I don't know.
They must have added her just tokind of appeal to a broader
audience, is what I'm thinking. Yeah, I mean, I think you
(12:37):
probably need to have a female character in there.
It helps have some eye candy. There's also a story in the book
where Piazza's friend Jacques isdating this woman, and they're
serving way up in the Orkneys atthis point, right?
They started big in hell. They go up to the Orkneys.
A little while later, they're down and Brighton again.
So they're kind of moving all over the place throughout their
careers in the army. But they're up in the Orkneys,
(12:58):
and Jacques hears that this woman he's been sleeping with is
going to get married. And he's like, I got to stop
her. And he was like, how are you
going to stop her? We're up in the back of beyond.
And Jacques is like, yeah, for me.
Your best friend, Jacques, wouldyou please go to the base
commander and ask if I can borrow his personal plane?
And Pierre is sort of the spokesman slash leader of the
(13:20):
Free French guys who are in thissquadron.
And he's like, dude, he's not going to let you borrow your
plane. And Jacques is like, do it for
me, I'm in love. Yeah, please.
So yeah, goes to the base commander.
And he's like, honestly, I thinkthe guy was just so stunned by
my audacity that he said yes. So, Jack, NPR take the plane.
At one point, they run out of gas, so they're late bringing
(13:42):
the plane back. Yeah, it gets in trouble.
Jacques never does manage to stop this woman from marrying
this guy. Anyway, It's like this whole
story that they tell and it's just shenanigans.
Where are the Orkneys? Is that Scotland?
Yeah, like way up north, all right.
Yeah, They were watching over a naval base up there, I believe.
Sometimes you tell me stories from the park and I'm like, how
(14:04):
are these men serious fly boys? Like, how are these actual
fighter pilots? They are boys.
They are acting like boys. They really are.
And I also think because their job was so dangerous that it was
a work hard, play hard situationwhere they would really blow off
steam and extravagant style as well.
(14:25):
But yeah, yeah, he initially flew Spitfires.
Sometimes he would fly two or three missions a day if the
weather was cooperating. So that's how he got up to 400
plus missions. And he participated in every
brand of fighter plane mission you can think of.
So he did dive bombing runs. He did bomber escort, he did
Recon flights, sweeps, patrols, ground target attacks.
He, as I said, served for a period up north in the Orkneys.
(14:48):
He also participated in the bombing of V1 installations.
He flew coverage in the Normandylandings in late 1944.
He trained on and made the switch to Typhoons, which were
British ground attack aircraft that were in heavy use in the
later part of the war because they could shoot down V ones.
And they were also known as a tank destroyer, so they could
destroy tanks from the air. And he also flew Tempest, which
(15:11):
were kind of like a redesigned version of the Typhoon.
And they were the fastest pistonengine fighter of World War 2 at
low altitudes, but they were kind of tricky to handle.
And he describes it in the book.Having to learn how to fly
Tempest was quite a change from flying Spitfires.
That's what he did basically during the war.
I feel like most people will know, but just in case if you
(15:31):
want is a rocket, yes, like a big massive rocket.
Like I'm not fun rocket. I mean no, rockets are fun when
they're in the hands of the enemy, but just saying.
Yeah. Well, and if you think about it,
think about how fast the Typhoonwould have to fly to be able to
shoot down AV1 rocket like thesethings really got going.
(15:52):
Yeah, like I've seen pictures ofall these fighter planes.
They look mega fast like I'm just like I can't imagine being
a one. But thanks for the I don't have
to imagine. I don't have to be a 1.
So this is Tim already kind of financed.
They go on a bunch of missions in this movie.
So when they go on another one, and this time Jack has playing
(16:13):
trouble on the way back and he isn't able to jump out in time.
So he has a lucky landing and hegoes to a hospital.
Patricia visits him there, visits him in the hospital.
He's staying with him all night.It's correctly.
And then Jacques decides that hedoesn't want to stay in the
hospital and he goes on a date with Patricia instead, and the
other two, Jean and Pierre, get drunk and steal a car, which
(16:38):
sounds really smart. The next morning they lie about
it and they also somehow do not get in trouble, but they do take
the nick out of some empties by like, messing them about.
It's really kind of a silly thing.
Yeah, in the book there are two New Zealand pilots under his
(16:59):
command later in the war who do this, but it seems like they
just took it and assigned it twoother characters, which is fine.
It's more fun. But there is actually a story in
the book where when they were stationed up in the Orkneys,
lots of times the weather would just be too terrible in the
winter to fly. And so they would get really
bored. So their CEO was like, all
right, what we're going to do iseveryone's going to go to the
(17:21):
countryside and we're going to give you a head start.
And then we're going to send theMPs after you.
And whoever doesn't get caught the longest wins.
And really, not very in the spirit of things, Calf and
Jacques decide they're going to go into a pub instead, kind of
hiding in the woods and, you know, doing the what they're
supposed to be doing. And so they're in there and they
get shitface drunk. And the MPs eventually show up
(17:42):
because they've been gone for hours.
And everyone thinks that they frozen to death.
And Pierre is so drunk, he's like, face planning.
But Jacques has the presence of mind to buy a bottle of booze
for the CEO to sort of smooth the blow when they get back.
Yeah. And so they get back, and the
CEO is like, why didn't you justdo the maneuver?
And they were like, well, Sir, we're French.
(18:03):
If we got shot down over France,we'll just go to the pub and
wait for the resistance to come get us.
Again, these boys are so inserious in real life like in
the movie, it's not that bad. I feel like the truth is
stranger and non fiction in thiscase.
Yeah absolutely. So surprised.
They go on yet another mission but this time one of the three,
(18:25):
Jean, doesn't make it back. His plane is crashed in Normandy
and he survived, but his plane is on fire and so is his face.
But just apparently he looks kind of messed up.
But he's saved by two French millions, including a person who
doesn't really like the Nazis. He's played by Eddie Ward Dummel
(18:47):
and they help him and Joan is mostly worried that he's blind.
But he doesn't want to go to a hospital because he wants to go
back to England and escape. He wants to escape back to
England via Spain, so they put him on a train to Spain.
Yeah, apparently Edouard Delmon was a well known French
character actor. Yeah, I think you can kind of
(19:08):
tell he choose the scenery a little bit, but he's kind of
fun. Yeah, I loved it.
He's got these huge sunglasses on because his eyes are fucked,
right? And they're he's just standing
in the train station, so conspicuous.
So with his sunglasses on, I waslike, good luck.
Are you a spy? You look like Ron.
Yeah, I don't have any information about, I mean, I
don't really know who Jacques orwho's Jon, sorry, it's supposed
(19:28):
to be based on. And I don't really have any
information about Jacques getting shot down either.
Which is not to say it didn't happen, it just didn't get
mentioned in Ciao's memoir. But Ciao himself did get shot
down flying over Germany in March of 1945.
Luckily he was able to get back to his own lines and he only
spent a week in the hospital with a leg wounds.
But when he got back, his wing mates wrote him a big sign that
(19:48):
says leave it to me, it's a piece of cake, which they swear
he said over the radio before hecharged in to a situation that
ended up getting shot down. And he was like, I don't think I
said that. And they were like, you
definitely said that. And they just razzed him about
it for the rest of the war. It sounds like him.
It sounds like a bit of a like abit of a big talker.
Like, big talk, but real fun too.
(20:11):
Like, if you're going to be in awar, thank God you've got these
meds trying to make it slightly easier and annoying.
Yeah. Next, Jack and Pierre get offers
this Commission. So they got very 50 new
uniforms. And Jack takes Patricia on
another day. But Patricia's uncle warns her
about him, but she doesn't really listen because she's in
(20:34):
love. Yeah, I had a shoehorn romancing
at all. Yeah.
What kind of kissing did they do?
Was it face sucking? I didn't notice.
I think so, but it wasn't enoughto make so must not have been
that bad. Maybe the French are just better
at it. They do get a genre of kissing
named after them. I mean, it is French kissing, so
(20:54):
the next bit is kind of fun. The French commander, Captain
Mous shot, played by Jean Christian, he's planning which
is where the name is from, and they are going to try and take
out the Richtofen wing, which isa wing of German fights or
pilots. And it's so important that Mous
shot. He wants to be the lead in this,
(21:16):
like he doesn't have to be what he wants.
Yeah, the Rexhoffen Wing. It was a very successful German
fighter wing during World War Two.
It was named after the Red Baronfrom World War One.
Everyone recalls the good old Red Baron.
Oh, he was a big time World War One flying ace on the German
side. He's, I mean, he's the only one
he could name. OK, it he's actually, oh, in the
(21:37):
Snoopy cartoons, he's always trying to shoot down the Red
Baron. I'm sorry my daughter this
flawed. I don't know any of this.
The wing flew both Metro SchmidtBF1O Nines and Spock Wolf One
90s and was basically a menace on the English Channel.
And so it was a major priority of the RAF to try and get rid of
them, dissuade them from being such pains in the asses.
(22:00):
So there's a specific airstrip mentioned in the book called
Thick Viv, and this was a Frenchairstrip that was taken over by
the Germans when they took over France in 1940.
They used it till July of 1943, and then they ended up having to
evacuate it because it was deemed too exposed to English
bombing because it was so close to the coast.
And they used it afterward, but only for transit and repair.
(22:21):
But it was one of the airstrips used to great effect by the
Richtofen unit to hammer the British and Canadians at Dieppe,
which we have mentioned before. It's like whenever we mentioned
something that we talked about before, I'm like, I know this, I
know this. It's so nice.
Yeah. So naturally this is followed up
by short big mission day. We get some German DOB where
(22:44):
there's no subtitles again, but unfortunately a couple the
Spitfires go down over Normandy,including Jack.
He encounters a priest played byPierre Larkey.
Larkey, I don't know who had himfrom the Germans.
And a familiar method by now, because it's in the coffin.
And Jack, like John, is very determined to get back home or
(23:07):
to get back to England. Yeah, the real Mushat was shot
down on the 27th of August 1943.PF talks about it pretty
extensively in the book. It seems like what happened was
he got separated from the rest of the group.
He was fighting a huge number ofenemy and he got separated.
(23:27):
And then it's kind of unclear what happened next because they
didn't find his body for quite some time.
But it seems like what happened was he went down in the North
Sea, way further north than theywere expecting.
And Pierre talks about how he thinks maybe there was some
battle fatigue involved because based on what he heard about
where the body was found and what had happened to the plane,
etcetera, he didn't really thinkthat a pilot as good as Mushat
(23:50):
would just go down like that unless there were extenuating
circumstances. And it seems like Pierre found
this to be very understandable. He was like, honestly, I'm
shocked that more of us lose it a little bit.
Mushat's last words that were heard on the radio where I am
alone with the bombers. And yeah, his Diaries were
published in 1949 in English. They're called the Mushat
Diaries. And you can have a look.
(24:11):
I believe they're available in bookstores.
I feel like I'm alone with the bombers.
Sounds kind of haunting in the way there's no one else here but
these bombers. Yeah, it's inevitable.
Like there's an inevitability tothat in some way.
Yeah, for sure. That makes it back to England
first and D-Day is in the air and Pierre is kind of a lucky
(24:35):
son of a bitch because he's my slight leader with the number 3
squadron of the RAF. Yeah, Pierre got promoted a few
times in real life, but not until 1945.
I think this is just the movie playing a little fast and loose
with timelines, but that's fine.He has a little conversation
with Jean, and Jean's still bucked up, right?
His eyes are not so good. They're healing.
He's not blind anymore, but he'snot doing great.
(24:55):
And thinking back over the movie, I was like, is this the
last time we see Jean? Like did he just go home?
I was very confused. I don't think it's explained at
all. You just you got a sense that
he's no longer able to fly, probably because of his eyes,
but they don't say so. They just have a conversation
and then we never see him again.It was especially tough for me
because he was the one I found most recognizable of the three.
(25:19):
Well, because he was blind with same glasses on.
No, because he was tall and he had dark hair and I was like
once he was gone. The other two I'm like, these
guys are too similar. I have no idea which one is Piaf
and which one is Jean. I agree that you also like kind
of the same smooth, and I like these really charming fighter
pilots and they've got the same hair.
(25:41):
So we don't see John again, but Jack does make it back, and it's
clear that everyone is starting to get a little bit itchy about
all their friends dying. The mood kind of changes in this
part of the movie. They're getting new pilots who
are young men with very little flying experience.
And it's around this time that the squadron moves across the
(26:02):
Channel back to France. Yeah, Jeff talks in the book
about how before he ever went towar, he had logged hundreds of
hours of flight time. And towards the end they were
getting replacement pilots that had flown A Spitfire for like
one or two hours. So then they were just like,
yeah. So within a few weeks of D-Day
in the summer of 44, the Free French squadrons were once again
(26:25):
stationed on the continent. And actually, the week after
D-Day, Piaf was one of the firstFree French pilots that touched
down on French soil in four years.
They teamed up with interior French forces units.
These were ex Air Force resistance members flying
captured aircraft, and they participated in the liberation
of the rest of France. And they continued to fly
missions until the end of the ORwhen they were incorporated back
into the regular French Air Force.
(26:46):
And with regard to Pierre, he got his Distinguished Flying
Cross in July of 44. And shortly after, they also
sent him on a little mental health break because they were
like, wow, Pierre, we can reallytell that you don't care if
you'll ever die at this point. You need to go work in general
staff for a little while and notfly anymore planes.
It's rough, man. I mean, they've done so many
(27:08):
missions here and so many peoplehave not come back, so I can't
really abandoned. I wonder like when is my luck
going to run out? Thinking the chances of me
surviving statistically and getting smaller and smaller and
smaller. Yeah, exactly.
And there are not only physical effects of anxiety and trauma,
but there's physical effects from flying at high altitudes in
(27:31):
these little planes, from dive bombing.
Some of the guys would get like bleeding in their lungs and that
kind of stuff. And so it was the whole thing.
It was not great for your healthto fly these fighter planes.
They'll say that. But there's like, that's true
for most, the mess of the roar. Yeah, No, not good for the
health in general. Yeah, there's a story in the
book where there is a young pilot and it's his first mission
(27:53):
or something like that, and he'sflying into the base and his
plane has been badly damaged by flax.
So his landing gear is fucked up.
Like it's stuck half out. And Pierre's CEO comes to get
him and is like, look, can you come up into the tower and talk
to this guy on the radio and tell him how to land this plane?
Because I don't know how he's going to put it down.
So Pierre goes up into the towerand he's like, did you try try
this? And the guy's like, yeah, I
(28:14):
tried that. And he's like, well, did you try
this? So he tries.
That doesn't work. And at this point, the young
pilot is starting to panic. And because he's got to put this
plane down because it's really fucked up, he's like, well, I'm
just going to try and land it. And Pierre was like, well, you
can't land it like that because you can't bring the wheels up
into a belly landing, and you can't bring the wheels down and
land it properly. But at this point, the pilot has
(28:36):
turned his radio off and Pierre was like, I was trying to tell
him to jump, like he should havetaken his parachute and jumped
out of the plane and just ditched it.
But the pilot tried to land the plane and as you can imagine, it
did not go well. There was a massive explosion
and Pierre basically got to watch them drag this body out of
the fire at the end and it was still twitching.
No, that reminds me a little bitof that one moment in Memphis
(29:01):
Belle. We're not listening to the guy
die on the radio. It's a similar ride for sure.
That's horrible. How do you deal with that kind
of stuff? I guess you don't really, which
is why they all needed to go on leave.
Yeah, and he was working in general staff for five or six
months. He was on leave from flying, so
clearly they thought he needed it.
(29:23):
Yeah, and like we already said, the movie has a change of tone
somewhere halfway through and itkind of continues when the boys
not going great for these Frenchguys.
The wink of mine got shot down and yeah, got promote it again.
Shark has been a bit upset and morose about not being able to
see Patricia, but she's still back in the mission, controlling
(29:46):
for the next mission over Germany, which is a big mission.
Yeah, I mean, obviously Patriciastayed behind in England when
the French troops moved across the Channel, so that's why he
hasn't seen her in a while. There's a story in the book
about when Pierre was promoted to acting Wing Commander, his
CEO handed him a huge stack of late paperwork and said try not
to die. I'm tired of replacing the Wing
Commander every week. Thanks.
(30:08):
Yeah, he's like, great. I guess I'll just go and tackle
all this paperwork that the other guys didn't do because
they didn't live long enough. Yeah, it's very much effective
for sure. Yeah.
The next mission we see is one Over The Rhine in Germany on May
3rd, 1945. It's the last day of air combat
and Jacques got shot down. He says goodbye to Patricia over
(30:32):
the radio, calling her darling. It's very kind of sad.
It is very sad, but I will admitI got a little bit of a feeling
about that one. But good news for Jacques heads
real Jacques survived the war and lived to old age.
So he did not die in this way. Yeah.
He actually found out in 1990 that he may have led the patrol
(30:52):
that critically wounded Irwin Rommel on July of 44.
The way Pierre tells this story in the book, he definitely gives
Jacques a little bit more creditthan Jacques is perhaps entitled
to. But Pierre is usually pretty
good about that. Like, he'll brag about his own
exploits, but he also things up his friends too.
But basically what happened was Irwin Rommel was travelling in a
motorcade, a patrol possibly ledby Jacques Strafed the
(31:15):
motorcade. They hit the driver, the Jeep
that Rommel was travelling in flipped and threw him out of it.
And he got, he ended up with three skull fractures.
So those are obviously not greatfor your health.
And so Rommel was in a coma for a little while.
And then what ended up happeningwas he got implicated in this
plot to assassinate Hitler. And as he was recuperating at
(31:37):
home in Germany, that a couple of German agents came to his
house. And we're like, hey, look, we'll
bury you with military honors, and we won't let your family go
through public disgrace, but youhave to kill yourself for your
involvement in this plot. And so that seems what he did.
But yeah, shock possibly involved in critically injuring
Irwin Rommel right before his death.
Do we know where this was? Where the you probably do you
(32:01):
probably look this up? If not, I'm sorry for calling
you out, but where did the ramelthing happen?
Was in Normandy, yeah, but Rommel was in a coma for a
couple of days and then the Germans insisted on bringing him
back to be treated in a German hospital, which probably did not
help with the length of his convalescence.
Yeah, but then neither does the fact that they kind of wanted
(32:22):
him dead after that. For sure, yeah, him probably
killing himself was it was a major factor in him being dead
thankfully. We also get some good news
because we eventually reach BE Day in the movie.
There are celebrations on the radio, but none of the airmen
seem to be having a very good time here.
Reminisces about the loss of allhis friends.
(32:45):
Goes on one last flight to say goodbye to his beloved planes
and it's very clear that he's not sure what he's going to do
next or how to actually go back to normal life.
Yeah, he's talks in the book about the last time he flies his
Tempest. After he lands it, the ground
crew sees him crying in the cockpit, so they all give him a
(33:05):
few minutes alone to compose himself.
Oh bless. When Sam was reading the book,
she was sending me like French quotes from the book.
I'm better at reading French than I am at listening to it, so
(33:26):
I could understand most of those.
And it's got some real hard hitter throughout this book.
There are some good quotes in it, and I think you're going to
read 1 for us in English. So this is from VE Day, he says.
(33:48):
Then came the Armistice, like a heavy door closing, 8
incomprehensible days and indefinable mixture of joys and
regrets, noisy displays interrupted by great
intermittent calms, and above all this unaccustomed silence,
thick weighing on the airfield, on the tarpaulin covered planes,
the dead squadrons and the emptyrunways.
The relaxation of the tensed nerves was terrible, painful as
(34:10):
a birth. It was enough to make you
scream. Beautiful.
If you know any French, please read it in French because it's
even more beautiful in French. Yeah, it's really lovely.
There's another bit, too, where they're getting ready to go
home. He's in the bar with one of his
friends who is also Aceo, and it's just the two of them in the
bar, but he's talking about how he can sense the ghost of the
(34:32):
other guys. So he says.
I looked up at Ken Hughes again.No need for words.
We understood each other half anhour, an hour perhaps past.
And then I swear I suddenly feltthat they were all there around
us, and the shadows and the cigarette smoke, like sad kids
who had been unjustly punished. Mackenzie, Jimmy Kelly, Mouse
Manson, Little kid, Bone Shepherd, Brooker, Gordon, and
(34:54):
also dark uniforms with tarnished gold braid who would
never see France again. Mushat, Mesali, Berro, Piero de
Guy, all of them, all of them who had left one fine morning
with their Spitfires and their Tempest and who had not
returned. Well, Pierre said Ken, that's
the end of it. They won't need us anymore.
We went to bed and I closed the door gently so as not to wake
the bartender who is sleeping onhis stool, and also so as not to
(35:17):
disturb the others. It's beautiful, like it's such a
poetic way of describing those feelings.
Yeah. And if you think about it too
much of this book is based on letters that he wrote home.
And so this is a young man of 2425 years old writing this
stuff home to his parents, for example.
It's beautifully written in parts for sure.
(35:38):
Yeah, I can't really say that this translates really well to
the movie. Like the movie's pretty
straight. It just happens.
There's no project anything in there.
Yeah, I agree. They definitely didn't really
get the the spirit of calf, I would say.
No, I just they got a little bitof the bravado, but I feel like
they give most of that to Jacques rather than Claire
(36:01):
himself. Yeah, I agree.
In the immediate aftermath of the war, Pierre Zluck started to
run out, and he seemed to be aware of this.
So there was a big victory parade where planes from all
(36:23):
different Allied groups were flying over Bremerhaven.
And Pierre, first of all, was like, I don't think this is a
good idea. All these plane groups that have
never flown together before don't necessarily know how to
fly in formation with each other.
But everyone was like, no, we'regoing to do it.
It's going to be great. So he's up there in his Tempest.
And what had happened was one ofthe other guys in his wing, what
(36:44):
they're supposed to do is they're supposed to jettison
their extra gas tank. And if you don't do that before
it runs out, what will happen isthe engine will just cut.
And so one of the other planes fell onto the plane that was
flying right behind Piaf. And that plane ended up clipping
PF and Piaf had to jump from hisplane and his parachute and
(37:05):
ended up being wounded and had asuper close call.
And one of the other pilots died, unfortunately.
Oh no. Yeah.
And then, so that was in May. And then in July he's in
Denmark. And the Danish king is like, oh,
will you fly over in your Tempest and do some tricks and,
you know, whatever. And so, yeah, I was like, sure,
why not? So he gets up in his Tempest
(37:26):
again and he ends up having someengine trouble.
And he describes the landing of that as the plane disintegrated
for half a kilometer. So he somehow walks away from
this without a scratch. And the Danish king is making
jokes about how lucky he is and how he escaped by the skin of
his teeth. But yeah, he seems to be pretty
(37:47):
aware that he's like, I don't know how many more of these I'm
going to get, you know? Yeah, I feel like why don't fade
any further? Just go home there.
Go. Yeah, there's one more story
that I thought was really interesting.
VA Day has happened. It's in the week after, you
know, it's like May 10th or 11thor something.
And he's on an airstrip with some of his guys and a group of
(38:12):
Measure Schmidt's just shows up and one of his sergeants is
like, well, holy shit, do we shoot at them?
And Piazza is like, well, no, the war's over.
Like try not to restart it. So all these Measure Schmidt's
land beautifully on the airstripexcept for the officers plane.
And when he lands it, he deliberately does this maneuver
where he like bounces one of thewings off the ground.
So he symbolically is deliveringhis plane not intact and he gets
(38:36):
out and he gives his Luger CPF as a symbolic we surrender sort
of thing. And it never occurred to me how
fighter plane squadrons would have surrendered at the end of
the war when everything was kindof chaotic.
And I guess that's one of the ways that they did it.
I don't know why but I just thought in my head that I just
went home, like OK bye. Yeah, I think particularly at
(38:59):
the end of the war, the Germans had really dispersed a lot of
their airfields because a lot ofthem had been badly damaged by
the Allies. And when they were making their
last ditch attempt, they were having to hide their planes in
the forest and in other places during the war, they built these
big underground plane factories and all kinds of things to
protect them from the Allies. And so I think by the end of the
(39:20):
war, the different squadrons andgroups were really spread out
all over the place. So it wasn't really a matter of
they're all in one place, they all go surrender together.
Right now they just have to go wherever they could reach to.
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Pierre, He was awarded
Distinguished Flying Cross. As we already mentioned.
He also got a bar for his DFC and I want to say April 1945 he
(39:44):
was. What does that mean?
It's like an additional they're like, hey, you get another one.
It's like you don't get 2:00 butyou get one with a bar on.
It he won an American Silver Star, he won the Croix de gaffe
with 19 Palms, and he won the Grand Croix Belle Jean Donaire,
so heavily decorated. After the war he worked as an
aeronautical engineer. He.
Served 8 terms in French parliament.
(40:05):
Really charismatic guy, well known in France.
He got really into deep sea fishing randomly.
That was his big hobby. He was married and he had three
sons. He was called up and he flew
again in 1956 and 57 during the Algerian War.
This was a colonial war where there were Algerian quote UN
quote rebels trying to get rid of the French colonial masters
(40:27):
that they had. There's a little segment at the
end of my copy of the Grand Cirque where Pierre talks a a
little bit about the Algerian War and it doesn't sound like he
enjoyed himself quite as much ashe did during the big show.
But yeah, like many war veterans, he became known for
his anti war beliefs later in life and he died on March 22nd,
2000. And.
Six, yeah. So he had a long life then?
(40:48):
Quite a long life. Yeah, he was 85, I think, when
he died. Yeah, the successful life as
well. Lots of things happened too.
I just want to talk real quicklyjust about the title, the big
show, the Grand Cirque. I've heard that use in synonym
just for the war in general. I think it's so interesting to
call it that, Like it's a show of force and a firepower, but
(41:13):
also it's also, what the heck are we doing it for A kind of
show sometimes, Like what? Whatever you've been fighting
for. Actually, I don't really know
what I want to say about it. I just wanted to mention it.
Yeah, right. At the end of the book, he has a
little passage where he sort of makes reference to the fact that
Le Graciuk, like the big shows, what they called World War 2 and
(41:36):
obviously a silk is also a circus.
And so this little passage he talks about, yeah, you know,
long after the circus is gone and they pack up the tent and,
and all that's left there is thepeg holes in the ground and
blah, blah, blah. He's like, eventually people
will forget about this. And yeah, so he does kind of
make reference to those kind of double meanings at the end.
Yeah. It's interesting.
I do wonder what this movie would have been if it had been
(41:59):
an American story. I feel like it would have been
much different. We talked about this a little
bit of mine and we kind of want another Pierre story, like a
bigger Pierre story for sure. Yeah.
I mean, I don't know who would make it, but I would love to see
this memoir where I get, you know, the Hollywood treatment I
get made into, like a big sweeping war epic.
(42:19):
I think it would be great. I'm just manifesting it now that
we're going to write the script and it's going to get picked up
by from what I'm just manifesting.
I'm just doing it absolutely. How hard can it be to write a
screenplay? I mean, that's what we thought
about starting up with Duster, to be fair.
So you never know. We have to read this.
(42:49):
We do. What, are we going to read it?
I don't know. Do.
You have any ideas? Repetitive missions out of 10.
That's threat. How many repetitive missions out
of 10 would you write this movie?
Gosh, y'all, I'm going to give this movie like 4 1/2 repetitive
missions out of 10. I thought it was fine when I
watched it, if I'm honest, because I watched it before I
read the book and I was like, yeah, this is all right.
(43:11):
I don't mind the combat scenes. It's very 1950s in this
shoehorned in romance. They're like, we can't make a
movie without a lady. And I mean, the female character
is not very deep by any means, but she is in there.
So there is that. And yeah.
And then I read the book and thebook was really good.
So then I was kind of thinking about all the ways that I would
(43:32):
make the movie differently if itwere me.
And yeah, so not that excited about it, but y'all go read the
book. Can't speak for the English
translation, but the French version is really good.
I would give the book like probably a nine repetitive
mission. So OK, I would give the movie
being also that I did not understand what they were
saying. I would give it probably also a
(43:54):
4 1/2 repetitive missions out of10.
It's not too long. It's not like super, super duper
long. So it's all right.
And like you said, there's some there's some good flying and
missions in there, but also they're all the same.
And I feel like what I'm kind ofmissing in this movie, some
sticks, it's not really. So yeah, not good, not great.
(44:17):
But also, I feel glad to have watched a French movie.
I like watching movies from different countries for sure.
I didn't mind the acting, but I also didn't love it.
So overall, just a bit about thewhole thing.
And I didn't notice how little music there is in this movie.
I feel like they didn't have thebudget to buy, like actual
(44:38):
music. Sometimes the music makes a
movie better than it than it is,but there's no music in this
bandy so. Yeah, and I think that that
plays into the kind of flatness of it, you know, narrative
flatness, emotional flatness. There aren't any really cool
cinematography moments and stuff.
(44:59):
It's just really, it's fine, butit's not.
It's no hell, you know? There's 49 shots of like 4
fighter aircraft just in the airdoing nothing but flying.
There's a lot of. There is, but I agree that I
think, I don't think we watched a French movie yet.
That was kind of fun. That was a perspective we didn't
get before. And I learned a lot about the
(45:21):
Free French that I didn't know that I thought was fascinating.
So I'm happy about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree.
I thought three-year learned quite a bit.
Thanks. Y'all, I subjected marks as so
much Piaf while I was reading this book.
I was like, here's another passage from Piaf, here's
another one. It was like 10 a day.
I was sending little snippets over.
But it's more if you get to talkabout it when you're reading, so
(45:44):
I agree. Speaking of reading, are you
reading anything? I'm reading Other than honorable
by Matt Hardman. I just started it last night.
I'm also reading a book. What a strange coincidence.
(46:04):
Crazy. I really like it so far.
I'm about a third of three and already and I quite like it.
It's fun. It's got good pacing, yeah.
Yeah, and I'm also reading Agents are, but normally I I
feel like I must have said it about four times on the podcast
already, but I'm still restoringthat.
Yeah, that one is on my docket. But I was laying in bed last
(46:27):
night and I had left my book in the other room, so I was like,
well, we're going to read something that I have available
on my phone. And I feel like this book is
good for like, when you want to engage your brain but also don't
want to have to pay too close attention.
I don't mean that in a negative brain.
I mean, not in a good brain. An entertaining book.
Yeah. Thanks everybody for listening.
(46:49):
You can find us wherever you getyour podcast and read us 5
slides. We would very much appreciate
it. You can follow us on Instagram
at Rosie the Reviewer Podcast, or actually, you can also visit
our website, rosiethereviewer.com For more
information. And you can send this episode
about our new favorite Pierre toyour friend because Pierre needs
(47:11):
more fans. So do that, please.
Yeah. It does need need more fans like
listen, this is a Pierre Klosterman fan page now.
He's so fun, I'm not even kidding.
Like if this hadn't been an American story, people would be
all over it, I'm pretty sure. So get on that and we'll see you
next week. Bye bye.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.