Marcel Marceau was a legendary mime, and according to a new film, he also had a hand in the resistance during World War II. In Resistance, Jesse Eisenberg plays Marcel, an aspiring actor who ends up using his talents to go up against the Nazis. It almost sounds too strange to be true, but it did happen – and now it’s the subject of this upcoming film from writer-director Jonathan Jakubowicz. Check out the trailer below

Resistance Trailer

I was vaguely aware of Marcel Marceau, and when I say “vaguely”, I mean I knew he was a mime…and that’s about it. But the new movie Resistance shows that Marceau did a lot more than clowning around. Dig the synopsis:

RESISTANCE is a true story of heroism in which a group of Girls and Boy Scouts created a network that ended up saving the lives of around ten thousand orphans whose parents had been killed by the Nazis in the Second World War. At the center of the movie we find an aspiring Jewish actor whose desperate need to help the children lead him into the world of pantomime, and who will later and, thanks to this experience, become the legendary French mime Marcel Marceau.

When I watched this trailer, and read this synopsis, I couldn’t help but ask: Is this true? The answer: Yes. Here’s some info from History.com:

Marcel Marceau was known worldwide as a master of silence. The world-famous mime delighted audiences for decades as “Bip,” a tragicomic figure who encountered the world without words. But during World War II, his skills as a mime came in handy for another reason: He used them to save Jewish children during the Holocaust.

Marceau was recruited to help the French Resistance by his cousin, Georges Loinger, a commander in the secret unit who was part of the Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants, a Jewish relief group that smuggled Jewish children from occupied France to neutral countries. Loinger, who was credited with saving around 350 children, died on December 28, 2018 at the age of 108.

And Snopes adds:

Masquerading as a boy scout, Marcel evacuated a Jewish orphanage in eastern France. He told the children he was taking them on a vacation in the Alps, and led them to safety in Switzerland. Marcel made the perilous journey three times, saving hundreds of Jewish orphans.

He was able to avoid detection by entertaining the children with silent pantomime.

Now, were the real events as exciting and action-packed as this trailer makes them seem? Probably not, but that’s how movies work, folks. You have to spice things up a bit. In addition to Eisenberg, Resistance features Ed Harris, Edgar Ramirez, Clémence Poésy, and Matthias Schweighöfer. Look for it in theaters March 27, 2020.

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