They left out more than they put in

Rating: 5/10 (20 January 2008)

Apart from the fact that I found this the most depressing film since "The Serpent's Egg", my biggest disappointments were with the lack of subtitling for the songs, and that large periods of Edith Piaf's life were just left out - WWII never happened! During WWII, France was occupied by the Germans, and just as in Iraq today, the occupying forces thought they, and the citizens who worked with them, were the good guys. The film "Le Chagrin et la Pitie" showed that many French citizens either willingly, or by indifference, collaborated with the Germans. Like many other prominent Frenchmen and women, Edith Piaf's actions during the war years were ambiguous to say the least. She was accused of collaborating, and she did sing for the Germans in their clubs. After the war, just as the majority of Germans claimed to have been anti-Nazi, the population claiming to have been members of the French Resistance grew to a point where you wonder how France ever fell to the Germans, and how they managed to deport so many French Jews. Edith Piaf claimed to have been secretly working for the Resistance, but this has not been verified. Whether or not she was a collaborator or a Resistance member should have been addressed in the film. Instead the narrative took a giant leap forward from 1940 to 1947.
The other fault was that the subtitling did not include a translation of her songs. As Piaf died over 40 years ago, she is not known to many people under the age of 60, and even they don't all speak French. If you are going to have subtitles for the dialogue, there should also be a translation of the songs, which were very much a part of her story, especially the final ending where she sang "je ne regrette rien" - I have no regrets! This was akin to making a foreign language film about Vera Lynn, without letting the audience know the words of her immortal inspiring songs of WWII.