The Weeping Frenchman

A mystery

In the early days of World War II, when German troops rolled into France almost uncontested, a photograph was made that has long been a mystery. It shows a Frenchman in tears watching something? I have always referred to this as “The Weeping Frenchman’” It is so sad, and yet entirely mysterious until now…

For many years, I have looked for a print of this famous war photograph. The profound sadness and despair in France in 1939, proud yet defeated in just a few days, the French were at a total loss. And it is all here, in a single frame.

A few years ago, I finally found a press print with crop lines in red and black, which only add to the importance in my mind!

Anonymous: The Weeping Frenchman

Like so many other mystery photographs, this one is attributed to an anonymous photographer. Some sources I found, say it was by an Associated Press photographer, who is not named.  Always one for a good mystery, I started looking a little harder.

For many years, it was assumed that the photograph was of bystanders along the Champs Élysées in Paris, watching German spit-polished boots goose-step from the Arc de Triomphe to the Place de la Concorde. However, there is nothing in the background of the photograph to verify this.

I have always wondered why no photographer ever took credit.  Why no print was ever made that didn’t seem a little muddy.  Was the negative lost? It is as though the only way to print this image was from a not-so-great inter-negative? This is definitely not a first-generation print, or is there something else going on?  I always thought the image was so good that the quality was secondary.  An image so important that I should keep looking, even if it wasn’t in crisp, mint condition, but a little blurred.

I started going through old new-reel footage in different places to see if there were any parade bystanders that could give me a clue. Something that could tell me where this photograph could have been made. And then suddenly, it all came together….

There is newsreel footage from a solemn time in Marseille - not Paris - where a parade of French Regimental Banners left French soil for safe-keeping in Algeria, so as not to fall into the hands of the advancing German Army. The banners left France onboard ship, returning only with the Invasion by Allied Forces towards the end of the war.  I assume this would have been in the fall of 1939. And there it was. On the newsreel there is a man, weeping. At 29 seconds, on a Youtube post from someone called ‘All is History’. The image below is a screen capture.

There is no way that a photographer would have been able to take a photograph at the exact same angle, from the exact same place, at this exact moment.  In other words, the credit for this incredibly important image goes not to a photographer, but to an unknown cameraman, covering the news.  A short newsreel probably shown in theatres of what little remained of a free Europe at the time. There never was a photographer, but rather a cameraman, who of course is equally elusive, but that is a mystery for another day.

The ‘photograph’ of the weeping Frenchman has become legend.  It has become the embodiment of so much pain and suffering by the occupied people of France.  The voice-over tells the story: 

“Gone is the Republic of France.  Gone is free speech and a free representative government.  Gone is liberty, equality, fraternity.  With their ears they listen, but their minds and their hearts are down by the Mediterranean, where the colours of the regiments are being taken to Africa, out of the Nazi grasp.  The people weep, as their glory departs…….”

Clearly, the Youtube video footage is a mix of footage from different locations and different times.  The voice-over added later. The mix of Charles de Gaulle footage and the footage of the banners leaving Marseille are not contemporary. However, the footage of the crowds and the banners leaving, I believe, are indeed from the same reel and as such, I can see nothing that would dispute either the origin of the photograph, or the ‘photographer’. The unknown cameraman.

Let me close by saying that I love the photograph.  I don’t care that it is a single frame from a few feet of film.  It is a symbol.  A moment in time.  What a photograph can sometimes do when it is very successful.  It stands as a testament. An entire war captured in a single frame.

I wrote this and did the research during COVID. A lot of time on my hands then. But I think it is an interesting story and worthy of your discerning eye.

The power of a great photograph.