General Charles de Gaulle, France’s second World War leader, complained prophetically of his American allies that “One day, the United States will try to be the moral authority of the entire world.”

He had every reason to be fearful. President Franklin D Roosevelt looked down on him as an arrogant fantasist, and barely tolerated his place in the anti-Hitler alliance. He demanded that postwar France be divided up, and effectively become hardly more than a glorified US dependency.

It was not to be, but de Gaulle’s distrust of all things American ran deep, a powerful anti-Atlanticism that divided Nato and drives France’s foreign policy to this day. His legacy still sets the agenda – questioning American reliability, debating strategic autonomy and wondering anew what sovereignty means in an age of military dependence and technological vulnerability.

In French cinemas over the summer, Homer’s epic tale of flawed Greek hero Odysseus vied with the two-part biopic of France’s own Homeric hero, de Gaulle. Based on British historian Julian Jackson’s biography, it had a poor early start but within weeks, 5 million people had flocked to see the film. To those weaned on Hollywood, it appealed as a 1960s-like classic war movie, with a dash of Casablanca’s stirring evocation of heroic subjugated French patriots standing up to the Nazis. Roosevelt does not come out well.

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