A Quote by Ivor Novello

There's something Vichy about the French. — © Ivor Novello
There's something Vichy about the French.
Well, he worked for a fairly harmless agency. He worked for the agency that looked after French prisoners of war. Though he was capable of some horrendous blunders when he was president. He once said that the Vichy legislation against Jews affected only foreign Jews, which was, of course, absolutely wrong. So he obviously wasn't too well-informed about what is going on in the Vichy government.
For fifty years, debates about French anti-Semitism mainly revolved around France's record during the Second World War, when the Vichy government collaborated with the Germans.
Now, if you are like me - if you are like practically anybody in America - then you probably hold some negative opinions about the French, based upon movies, rumors, recent headlines, unfortunate run-ins with Parisian waiters, or... you know... all that unpleasantness surrounding the Vichy regime.
My film is in French. It's not something folkloric. It's who we are. There's this tension about immigrants coming in. Will they learn French? Will they adapt? In this film, I'm on the reverse side because Monsieur Lazhar comes from a society where French is also the second language.
There were the events of 1968 when young people began to ask their parents, what did you do in the war? And since the middle- or late-'70s, the French have been absolutely obsessed with the Vichy regime. They have an institute of contemporary history that turns out first-rate scholarly work. Their textbooks are accurate. Whether the students actually read them is another matter.
We need French chaplains and imams, French-speaking, who learn French, who love France. And who adhere to its values. And also French financing.
When I arrived at Columbia, I gave up acting and became interested in all things French. French poetry, French history, French literature.
When I was a child, I grew up speaking French, I mean, in a French public school. So my first contact with literature was in French, and that's the reason why I write in French.
I actually don't think there is any difference between French and American cuisine. French cuisine was always about discipline, about ingredient, about creativity, but also about simple. I see America as very similar in these rights.
I went to Brown to be a French professor, and I didn't know what I was doing except that I loved French. When I got to Paris and I could speak French, I know how much it helped me to establish relationships with Karl Lagerfeld, with the late Yves St. Laurent. French, it just helps you if you're in fashion. The French people started style.
OSS 117 and maybe Un Balcon Sur La Mer directed by Nicole Garcia. It's a typical French movie with typical French themes with French actors, a French director.
It's very important to say that French doesn't belong to France and to French people. Now you have very wonderful poets and writers in French who are not French or Algerian - who are from Senegal, from Haiti, from Canada, a lot of parts of the world.
I am a guest of the French language. My poems in French are born of my interaction with the French language, which is not the same as that of a French poet.
We have talked about revoking French citizenship for some individuals. Therefore, I have decided to apply for citizenship, which in a way points out the contradictions of this bill that states the forfeiture of French citizenship exclusively to individuals holding dual nationalities. Through this application, I put myself in the midst of the French political debate and discredit everything that might be said against me about this matter.
There's always something fishy about the French.
When I got to college I simply decided that I could speak French, because I just could not spend any more time in French classes. I went ahead and took courses on French literature, some of them even taught in French.
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