The project is ambitious: to tell 1942, a pivotal year of the Second World War, not through the political or military aspect, but by relying on amateur films, letters, the diaries of those who suffered the war . Documents unearthed from Berlin to Singapore, from Tokyo to Rio, from Prague to Waterloo (Iowa, in the United States). Between these film and sound archives put into perspective by the deep voice of Anna Mouglalis are interspersed animated sequences by Sophie Racine.
The project of directors Véronique Lagoarde-Ségot and Marc Ball was therefore ambitious: six episodes of just under an hour each, to evoke the war on a daily basis, most often far from the front. This reminds us that, in times of war, we continue to love, to argue, to have fun.
Using the stories of civilians to build a documentary and tell the war on a daily basis is not new. We remember, in particular, Living in Germany at war (2020), by Jérôme Prieur, based on letters from couples, to describe the daily life of the Germans between 1933 and 1945.
Unique lighting
Regarding this documentary series devoted to 1942 and broadcast two evenings in a row (Tuesday February 28, Wednesday March 1), at the rate of three episodes per evening, the social, cultural and generational diversity of the witnesses is both a richness and a brake.
Wealth because the testimonies of an American worker in an arms factory, of a young Chinese man trapped by the Japanese in Singapore or of an English housewife who, through her private diaries, reveals her weariness and her doubts about victory after two years of bombing, shed new light on the war. A brake because, by multiplying the points of view, passing in a few minutes from one continent to another, from a testimony of a civilian in the rear to that of a soldier at the front, from a banal problem ( adultery, boredom) to a more warlike theme, we lose the thread of this year 1942.
At the end of more than five hours, certain testimonies obviously stand out. We will remember that of Peggy, a young American who, with the war, finally finds something to earn a living: “I found a job in a munitions factory. We make 32 dollars a week, it’s a real miracle! »
War, an opportunity? For 12-year-old German Ursula, “victories change our lives!” I want to be a heroic wife and mother.” His compatriot Hanno, a submarine commander sailing in the Atlantic, saw the war in his own way: “It has been forty days since I launched a torpedo. If I come back empty-handed, my career is over,” writes the man who has already sunk ten ships in the Gulf of Mexico.
But to be decorated, it needs more. A few days later, off Brazil, his submarine sank two passenger ships, causing hundreds of civilian casualties. Result ? Faced with an ulcerated public opinion, Brazil launched the war against Germany on August 22, 1942.
Opening the documentary, Lilly, a German model mother, recounts her tumultuous New Year’s Eve: “Political dispute between my father and my husband, reproaches on the education of the children. It is this same Lilly who closes the long chapter, on December 31, 1942. She is happy, she has fallen in love… with a woman.
