Vaincre ou mourir () is a French film co-directed by Paul Mignot and Vincent Mottez, produced by Puy du Fou Films and StudioCanal, released in 2023. The feature focuses on the War in the Vendée through the prism of Vendée general François Athanase Charette de La Contrie.
The film was mostly poorly received by the press but audience reviews gave the film high praise. The film attracted approximately 300,000 spectators in nine weeks. Historians specializing in the French Revolution note few factual errors but point out that while the film does not repeat counter-revolutionary propaganda, it facilitates the narratives of such organizations.
Synopsis In revolutionary France, in 1793, after three years of tranquility at the Château de Fonteclose, where he settled after his marriage, François Athanase Charette de La Contrie is called by angry peasants to take command of the Vendée insurrection.
The young sailor becomes a skillful strategist and charismatic war leader, defying the Republic with his army of peasants, women, and children.
Technical details Original title: Vaincre ou mourir Directed by Paul Mignot, Vincent Mottez Screenplay: Vincent Mottez based on the Puy du Fou show Le Dernier Panache Music: Nathan Stornetta Sets by Audrey Malecot, Irène Marinari Costumes: Les Vertugadins Photography: Alexandre Jamin Editing: Tao Delport Producers: Guillaume Allaire, Hubert De Filippo, Nicolas de Villiers Production company: Puy du Fou Films, StudioCanal Distributor: Saje distribution Genre: historical, action, adventure Country of production: France Original language: French Running time: 100 minutes Release dates: France: January 25, 2023 Classification: France: General public when released in cinemas and not recommended for under-10s on television.
Distribution Hugo Becker: François Athanase Charette de La Contrie Rod Paradot: François Prudent Hervouët de La Robrie Gilles Cohen: Jean-Baptiste de Couëtus Grégory Fitoussi: Jean-Pierre Travot Constance Gay: Céleste Bulkeley Dorcas Coppin: Marie Adélaïde de La Touche Limouzinière de La Rochefoucauld Jonathan Demurger: Nicolas Haxo Francis Renaud: Jacques-Louis Maupillier Damien Jouillerot: Louis Lecouvreur Olivier Barthélémy: Pfeiffer Anne Serra: Marie-Anne Charette de La Contrie Jacques Milazzo: Abbé Remaud Jean-Hugues Anglade: Albert Ruelle
Léon Durieux: Louis XVII Avant Strangel: Thomas Alexandre Dumas
Production Genesis In March 2022, the Parc du Puy du Fou announced plans to produce a feature-length film through its subsidiary Puy du Fou Films. The project is presented as a historically inspired documentary. This first film focuses on François-Athanase Charette de La Contrie, a major figure in the Vendée War. The project follows on from Le Dernier Panache, created in the Vendée park and voted Best World Creation by the Themed Entertainment Association in 2016. The Pays de la Loire region is contributing €200,000 to the production of Vaincre ou mourir, which requires less than five million euros.
Development Several historians and specialists were consulted by the filmmakers, without taking part in writing the script: Jean-Clément Martin, Anne Rolland-Boulestreau, Reynald Secher, Nicolas Delahaye, and Anne Bernet. However, Jean-Clément Martin later asked for his involvement to be withdrawn. In December 2022, director Vincent Mottez commented: “It's true that the project, originally presented as a docu-drama, evolved into a feature film as the project progressed. I fully understand that Jean-Clément Martin, seeing the basic contract modified, made this request. However, we remain on very good terms“.
Filming Filming began in March 2022, in and around the Parc du Puy du Fou.
Post-production The film's theatrical distribution is handled by Studiocanal, a member of the Vivendi group then owned by Vincent Bolloré, and by Saje. Saje produces films aimed at a Christian audience interested in “everything to do with faith”, in the tradition of American confessional cinema, in the words of Hubert de Torcy, CEO of Saje.
Home Release and promotion The film was released in France on January 25, 2023. Prior to this, previews were held in several French cities on December 8, 2022.
The film was scheduled for release in Spain on September 15, 2023.
Critical reception In France, review aggregator Allociné shows an average of 1.3⁄5 based on 10 press titles. Audience reviews gave the film an average of 4 out of 5, but after an analysis by Libération, their representativeness was called into question by marketing specialists. A year later, audience reviews gave the film an average of 3.6 out of 5.
Positive reviews The film received positive reviews, mainly from the conservative press: the traditionalist Catholic monthly La Nef wrote: “the producers have given us a grand spectacle of a film, with excellent actors who are its strong point”. Journalist François Maximin concludes: “The spirit of the film is remarkable, and follows historical reality as closely as possible. In terms of resources, there's nothing ridiculous about the staging, even if it's far from the big Hollywood productions: the image is beautiful, the scenes well shot. All of this is positive, and yet, as we leave the screening, we can't help but feel that something is missing, that we're missing the epic dimension of such a story“.
On Claves, the Christian education website of the Fraternité Saint-Pierre, Abbé Paul Roy sees Vaincre ou mourir as “a beautiful film that brings to life all the paradoxical horror of those forgotten times in our history”. For him, the film remains “discreet about Charette's Christian life, and does not claim to canonize his hero, but shows him fighting for God and the king in a Christian atmosphere. The abbé's presence is constant at his side, even if the character can sometimes seem a little fallible (and unshaven): from the first magnificent images of mass in the woods to the final absolution given to the condemned man on the way to the firing squad”. He asserts that “the great quality of the production, which reflects the expertise of the Puy du Fou, certainly lies in the fine spirit with which the epic of this Vendéen hero is retold, in the beauty of the images, costumes, scenes in general and the music that accompanies them, and in the richness and historical and literary depth of the text that forms the overall framework”.
The Zickma website focuses on the form and the actors: it praises “a formidable Rod Paradot who continues to prove his talent ”as well as“ the beautiful sets, the meticulous staging (despite a few clumsinesses), the beautiful costumes, not forgetting the lovely soundtrack, albeit a little too present”. The reviewer concludes that Vaincre ou mourir “brings a breath of fresh air to French cinema [which] does a lot of good”.
Negative opinions Paul Quinio of Libération sees this production as “yet another example of the ongoing conservative offensive, which uses soft power to spread ideas without appearing to do so”. For the journalist, the film is part of “a cultural and ideological battle [...] that is far from over”. He sees in the proposed depiction of the confrontation between “royalists and republicans” during the War in the Vendée “good royalists” against “evil republicans”. Interviewed by Libération, historian Guillaume Lancereau criticized the scriptwriters for “getting a reactionary, Manichean vision” of the events into the heads of as many people as possible. His colleague Elisabeth Franck-Dumas agrees: “What's most fascinating about a militant film that has turned its characters into alibis is the prominence given to concepts, to those headless, abstract, visibly evil entities against which Charette and his friends fight relentlessly. Their names are republic or history. [...] Reversing history, a good definition of the reactionary enterprise“. Albane Guichard of Le HuffPost criticizes the film's use of an interview with “the controversial Reynald Secher, who supports the thesis of a Vendéen ‘genocide’ in his books”, and its ambiguous language: “from the outset, the line between documentary and fiction is blurred”, a “strategy already used in the Park's shows”.
Télérama's Samuel Douhaire headlines “Vaincre ou mourir, un film du Puy du Fou si mauvais que même les royalistes détesteront” (Conquer or die, a Puy du Fou film so bad even royalists will hate it), claiming that the War in the Vendée is “told with Chouan glasses and big clogs”.
In L'Obs, Xavier Leherpeur immediately places the film in his “Raté de la semaine” box: “To the question posed by the title, the answer is clear: die rather than ever see this historical nonsense again". The columnist regrets that the means are “powerless to save the film from its scripted muddle” and finds the direction “inert, relying on an abusive use of drone and low-angle shots to reinforce the Christ-like dimension of the central character”. He concludes: “very little cinema, a lot of noise and proselytizing fury, all sprinkled with a heavy-handed Christian message”.
Murielle Joudet of Le Monde also describes the film as “a historical nonsense”, characterized by “an audiovisual mush that reels off all the hackneyed clichés of the historical film, stirring up its Christian and virilist imagery with visual effects from another age”.
According to Le Parisien, “despite some rather successful action scenes, Vaincre ou mourir struggles to convince, both in form and content”.
Journalist Olivier Delcroix of Le Figaro writes: “If Charette's epic (played by Hugo Becker, who does what he can) deserves to be retold, this is not the way to do it. [...] It's violent, bloody, noisy, aggressive. One sighs at the mere idea of a film that could have been made by Philippe de Broca“.
Sylvestre Picard of Première asks: “Is Vaincre ou mourir at least a great spectacular film? Not really. Above all, it's riddled with ellipses, with the voice-over filling in the gaps in a straitjacketed narrative, stuck in its reductive vision of the world - even if this vision advances masked”. He adds that the feature film is “distributed by Saje, which specializes in Christian films (such as the sinister anti-abortion drama Unplanned in 2019), co-produced by Canal+, owned by the very Catholic Vincent Bolloré”. The journalist points out that the prologue is signed by “historians including the very oriented Reynald Secher, supporter of the controversial Vendée genocide thesis”.
On the Écran large website, Antoine Desrues declares that “the production by Puy du Fou Films assumes the role of a royalist and fundamentalist Catholic tract”, “in which the Republic is perceived as the political system that has, little by little, led to the downfall of our Christian values”. The journalist considers that Charette is presented as “an icon whose actions and ideological stance have never been called into question”. He also compares Vaincre ou mourir to an overtly evangelist strand of Hollywood cinema (Dieu n'est pas mort or Unplanned) that has become “a business in its own right”. Antoine Desrues castigates the underlying message of the film: the “civilizational battle of Vincent Bolloré, who exploits the seventh art as a propaganda tool similar to Touche pas à mon poste. Welcome to 2023, and to the return of total obscurantism, which no longer even bothers to provide itself with an attractive case to mask its mephitic odor”. His colleague Mathieu Jaborska backs up his comments: “Crude royalist exaltation would almost pass for a tolerable position if the pseudo-documentary approach didn't take us for suggestible morons”.
Télé 2 semaines wrote: “while it has the merit of shedding light on a little-known hero, this historical fresco suffers from a predictable script and sloppy direction, particularly in the battle scenes”.
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