Au Revoir Les Enfants
I’ve always wonder how autobiographical “Au Revoir Les Enfants” is for New Wave pioneer Louis Malle? We know that Malle spent time at a Catholic boarding school in France during the German occupation. According to interviews with the director, he witnessed a Gestapo raid on the school, in which 3 students and a teacher were captured and sent to their deaths at Auschwitz.
These students and the teacher were Jewish. The school’s headmaster Pere Jacques de Jesus, was also arrested and sent to Mauthausen concentration camp, were he died right after the liberation by the Allied troops.
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In the film one of the Jewish boys and another student, Julien strike up a friendship, Julien and the other students realize very early that the new kids are Jewish. Headmaster Pere and the other teachers have taken these boys in to try and shelter them from the Germans. The school kids are at first standoffish but after time warm to the new kids, of course something happens which Julien unfortunately & accidently is the cause of that outs the kids, leading to the horrible outcome.
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I’m not an expert on Louis Malle, so I do not know the answer, and I have to take him at his word, in 2 interviews I read, he says he just witnessed the events. Now just witnessing these horrible events would be bad enough, but what if he were friends with kids that the Nazis killed I’m not sure that’s something you can get over, and Malle made a lot of films about the loss of innocence, and as he said about this event; ”may well have determined my vocation as a filmmaker”
Malle’s true gift here is how he keeps this bleak and tragic subject matter from being hopeless.
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by Paisley Muffin Productions
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