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It’s a testament to Louis Malle’s unfussy and straightforward direction that he can make a film about a subject as portentous as the Nazi invasion and the holocaust without resorting to the sentimentality or blustery politicizing that has hindered many lesser directors who approached the subject. Malle began his directing career in the mid-fifties as the French New Wave was starting to make small but influential waves. However as directors like Jean-Luc Godard abandoned narrative cinema to explore didacticism and video art and Francois Truffaut made increasingly sentimental movies that harked back to some bygone age of cinema history, Malle steadfastly stuck to developing a concise and consistently engaging oeuvre. This led to him being unfairly dismissed by the French critics that had once championed him as a pioneer, as if the idea of films being accessible and well-loved the world over was a negative thing, when Malle actually achieved this positive reception without pandering to commercial tastes anyway. He may lack a defining pro-filmic style ala Godard, and he may further confuse auteur-ists by exploring many different subjects in different countries and languages but one thing ties his films together, and that’s his emphasis on a humanistic approach to his stories. When exploring a subject like the May ’68 riots, as he did in ‘Milou En Mai’ (1990) he examined this huge political upheaval from the viewpoint of how it affected a bourgeois family temporarily stranded in their countryside retreat, who were in many ways the exact type of inherently rich people the revolt was against. By doing so he showed us how political actions affect individuals, thus making it much more relatable for an audience who may be far removed by time and distance from the original actions.
If an individual humanistic approach to political upheaval is one of Malle’s preferred subjects, then ‘Au Revoir Les Enfants’ (1987) could be his key film subject-wise, whereas in terms of style and storytelling it is arguably his most satisfying. The film is written by Malle himself and based on real experiences he had during World War Two. During the last few years of the war Malle was taught in a Roman-Catholic boarding school that housed Jewish children by giving them different names and protecting them, a conceit that forms the basis of Au Revoir Les Enfants. It centres on a tenuous friendship that builds up between the pampered popular kid Julien Quentin (Gaspard Manesse) and a suspicious new arrival called Jean Bonnet (Rapheal Fejito). At first the boarding school’s natural hierarchy sees Bonnet get bullied but Julien quickly bonds with him over a shared love of literature and their natural abilities in class and games. However, the resourceful Julien quickly picks up clues that reveal Bonnet’s true identity. His reluctance to talk about his family and his refusal to share Catholic communion leads Julien to investigate Bonnet’s personal items which reveal his real surname to be Kippelstein – Jean is really a Jewish child being sheltered at the school, Bonnet is his disguise name.
Such subject could easily have (and has since) turned saccharin and sentimental in a lesser director’s hands but Malle’s direction emphasises the subtlety of their burgeoning friendship. Even more believable is the way Julien reacts upon his discovery. It’s taken as a given these days that school children over Europe would have learnt about World War Two in history class but those schooled at the time may have had a lesser understanding of the war’s larger implications, just as kids in school today may not understand wars that have taken, or are taking, place overseas. A brilliant piece of dialogue entails shortly after Julien uncovers Bonnet/Kippelstien’s secret. He asks his older brother Francois “why do we hate them [the Jews]?” to which he replies, “because they’re smarter than we are and they killed Jesus”. The smart and ever questioning Julien responds with “but it was the Romans who killed the Jews”. Julien is clearly confused as to why such hatred would take place and result in a war, so he continues to accept Jean as a good friend.
Such subtlety does not only apply to the film’s key friendship but also colours the entire depiction of boarding school life. The school is a much-explored area in French film cinema. Two obvious examples are ‘400 Blows’ (1959) and ‘The Class’ (2008). Made by Malle’s contemporary and key nouvelle vague director/writer Truffaut,’400 Blows’ explored a poor child’s negative experiences in a harsh inner-city school, while Laurent Cantet’s ‘The Class’ is currently wowing critics, awards bodies and art-house crowds worldwide with its depiction of a multi-racial Paris suburb classroom. Here is an equally realistic depiction of school life, although the situation is markedly different. Many of the children, like Julien, seem to come from nurturing and privileged backgrounds. While the typical schoolyard hierarchy allows mild teasing and rough playground games, everyone generally gets on with each other and makes the most of their superior education - the older kids are seen discussing existentialism while the younger children talk of women and the implications of death. Even as their everyday routine of hymns, classes, and confessions are regularly interrupted by actual air-raids, such challenges are met with camaraderie by the boys and teachers alike. The monks and teachers that run the Catholic school are also seen as being supportive and respected, hence their willingness to take in Jews under assumed names to shelter them from the Nazis (as a result of such actions in real life sources claim that almost 75 percent of French Jews survived the war).
The Nazis themselves are an ever-threatening presence throughout but as the film is set towards the end of the war their powers seem curiously diminished in two key scenes. The first occurs during a ‘hunt the treasure’ exercise in a nearby forest. Jean and Julien eventually find themselves separated from the rest of the troupe and as night falls a roaming group of Nazi soldiers find them. Jean naturally runs away in fear but as the soldiers catch them, they merely take the boys back to the school, reasoning that they are Catholics too. The other scene sees Jean attend a restaurant meal with Julien’s wealthy family. They are seated next to some highly decorated German officers when two younger soldiers enter and ask an elderly Jewish gentleman to leave. However, the officers stick up for the elderly man and dismiss the younger Gestapo members. With this said though, the climactic arrival of the Gestapo at the school inevitably ends in tragedy, without giving too much away. The final scene is largely witnessed through Julien’s eyes and the film ends with a lingering shot of his face as he watches the atrocity unfold, much in the same way that ‘400 Blows’ ended on a lingering close-up of its protagonist’s face during a key moment. It proves the pinnacle of Malle’s intimate humanistic approach to such a harrowing subject matter, in focusing the effects of such an unspeakable evil on a vulnerable group of individuals.
If the school life and depiction of friendship is pleasingly subtle, it is matched by the formal and aesthetic qualities of the film. A wintry mise-en-scene is employed consisting of a minimal palette of cool blues and greys, while the editing is typically unfussy and crisp. Music wise Malle cleverly avoids a hugely sentimental score that many other directors might have employed. Instead the only accompaniment comes from the diegetic source of the boys’ piano lessons and re-appears non-diegetically on occasion throughout the film. The boys receive piano lessons from the lusted after female teacher Davenne (Irène Jacob), and provide another interest apart from books for Julien and Jean to bond over. At first Julien is jealous of his new classmates natural playing abilities but a scene soon occurs that sees the two teaching each other jazzy standards while the rest of the school is holed away during an air raid. This wouldn’t be a film made by a director involved in the original French New Wave if it didn’t contain a scene that romanticised a bygone era of cinema and the collective joy experienced in movie-going, and ‘Au Revoir Les Enfants’ proves no exception. Not long before the end we see the boys, monks, and the priests crammed into a screening room watching a Charlie Chaplin movie with accompaniment provided by the piano teacher. Everyone is united in laughter and escapism, making it the film’s most outwardly sentimental scene that doesn’t really drive the plot forward, but can be forgiven as neither does it particularly detract from the emotional subtlety displayed elsewhere.
In many ways Malle’s treatment of his subject and themes makes it the anti-‘Life Is Beautiful’ (Roberto Benigni, 1997), a Spanish film that explored similar themes only with a much more sentimental and light approach. Admittedly there are differences in that Life Is Beautiful is actually largely set in a concentration camp while in Malle’s film the camps are a looming threat, but in tackling a similar subject matter a duel examination of both films makes clear how successful ‘Au Revoir Les Enfants’ is in procuring an emotional response from the viewer without resorting to its counterparts pandering and unsubtle approach. Although it received plaudits and awards on release many critics have since denigrated ‘Life Is Beautiful’ for its clowning around, as if it is effectively showing ‘the lighter side of the holocaust’. For those who agree with this view ‘Au Revoir Les Enfants’ will be an ideal tonic. Because above all Malle seems to understand that his narrative has an intrinsic power in itself that no amount of sentimental music, hammy acting or manipulative direction could express better, and so leaves the story unhindered by his usual commendable clearheaded direction.
Country: France/West Germany
Budget: £
Length: 104mins
Filmography
‘400 Blows’ 1959, François Truffaut, Les Films du Carrosse
‘Milou En Mai’, 1990, Louis Malle, Nouvelles Éditions de Films (NEF)
‘Life Is Beautiful’, 1997, Roberto Benigni, Cecchi Gori Group
‘The Class’, 2008, Laurent Cantet, Haut et Court
Pub/2009
More like this:
'Black Moon', 1975, directed by Louis Malle
'Le Souffle (Deep Breath)' 2001, directed by Damien Odoul
'Presque Rien (Almost Nothing)', 2000, directed by Sébastien Lifshitz