France is undergoing a major shift in the perception of the country's wartime collaboration with the Nazis, marked by a new television film focusing on the unsung heroes of the Resistance.

Historians say that after a period of overblown pride in wartime resistance, the French had swung in recent decades to a national sense of guilt over the country's submission to its German occupiers.

The docu-drama, La Résistance, shown on French television, focuses on little known, often small-scale acts of resistance during four years of Nazi occupation.

Pierre Laborie, a historian, said the film clarified the fact that "an enormous number of people refused to give in (to collaborating)".