French salute Collins film

"LE grand type", "le grand mec", "le grand bonhomme" and "grand gars" - who would have thought there were so many ways to translate "the Big Fella" into French? Paris movie critics voiced at least as many different opinions of Neil Jordan's film when Michael, Collins finally opened here yesterday.

Michael Collins was front page news in Le Figaro, which published a large photo of Eamon de Valera, Harry Boland and Collins as played by, Alan Rickmnn, Aidan Quinn and Liam Neeson.

Fiance's highest circulation newspaper said the film's rendering of history was "spectacular". Jordan's direction "mixes realism with the unpredictable imagination that distinguishes Irish genius, blending peasant good sense and irrational frenzy", its film critic wrote effusively. Liam Neeson, he added, "radiates affability born of determination, lucidity, courage and the imagination that he brings to his character with - in addition - tenderness, warmth, a sense of life and of happiness for everyone."

Liberation led the anti Hollywood camp who felt that Jordan had sold out and made a movie calculated to touch the emotions of "Irish American cops".

Libe catalogued the film's historical inaccuracies, from the lack of proof that de Valera was involved in Collins's death, to the fact that Ned Broy survived and the portrayal of Kitty Kiernan as a "country bumpkin ... when Miss Kieruan was a city girl, modern and very sure of herself". Nonetheless, Libe concluded, Mr Jordan "knew he was taking on the most painful thing in Ireland, the Civil War and the division of the country, wounds that are still open.