The French Resistance: a romantic ideal for most

For many years, I accepted the idea in the old joke that the French Resistance was an oxymoron. Every French family I spoke to seemed to have a war hero who was shot by the Gestapo for sabotaging trains. I often wondered exactly how many people were in the French Resistance, but no one knows.

I do know that many families were divided. I remember when I first went to my husband's family home in the Vercors, an Alpine region which witnessed horrific fighting during World War II and was one of the main Resistance pockets. He took me for a walk in the countryside and showed me two small crucifixes underneath some blooming chestnut trees. They bore the dates of June, 1944 and commemorated two of his cousins, both Resistance fighters who were shot in the nearby gully a few months before the liberation of Paris.

But not everyone in that family were good

guys. Like most French families, there were those who loathed the occupation and those who kept their noses clean. I don't think anyone in his family actually collaborated, but I think many of them wanted to feed their families and stay alive. So they looked the other way. I have had so many philosophical debates about the Resistance since I moved to France. I would like to think I would have been one of those people blowing up trains and harbouring Jewish families. But I have a small child. Would I have, instead, remained quiet, kept my head down and ignored the horror around me simply to stay alive or more importantly, keep him alive? Would I have slept with a German officer to get food if my family were starving?

It is easy to be highly principled during peacetime. But I have lived in war in several countries and I have seen ordinary people do extraordinary things. And I have seen ordinary people do extraordinary acts of evil simply because they were following orders.

Sophie Marceau's new film Female Agents is released in the UK on June 27. It's a good film, based on the true story of an extraordinary Frenchwoman, Lise