Malle never forgot the day when Nazis raided the Petit-College and arrested three Jewish students and the headmaster (Father Jacques in life, Father Jean in the film). The students and their teachers lined up in the courtyard as the little group was marched off the grounds; the priest looked back at them and said, "Au revoir les enfants." Goodbye, children. The three boys died at Auschwitz. The priest, whose birth name was Lucien Bunuel, nursed others and shared his rations at the Mauthausen camp, where he died four weeks after the war ended.
I remember the day "Au revoir les enfants" was shown for the first time, at the 1987 Telluride Film Festival. I had come to know Louis Malle a little since a dinner we had in 1972; he was the most approachable of great directors. I was almost the first person he saw after the screening. I remember him weeping as he clasped my hands and said, "This film is my story. Now it is told at last."
Louis Malle was a pioneer of the French New Wave. His "Elevator to the Gallows" (1958) followed Jeanne Moreau through Paris using available light and a camera on a bicycle, which were then revolutionary techniques. His "The Lovers" (1958) and "Zazie in the Metro" (1960) were simultaneous with the other early New Wave films. Later in his career, he made powerful but more conventional narrative films like "Au revoir les enfants," "Murmur of the Heart" (1971), "Pretty Baby" (1978) and "Atlantic City" (1980). His "Lacombe, Lucien" (1974), about a working-class youth who falls in with the Nazis, may have been inspired in part by the character of Joseph, the kitchen helper in "Au revoir." As he gained worldwide success, Malle fell out of favor with some French critics because his films were popular and accessible, and also because he married Candice Bergen, although their love was true and she was his rock as he died in 1995 of lymphoma. Until the end, he was willing to experiment, as in "My Dinner With Andre" (1981), and the remarkable "Vanya On 42nd Street" (1994), a film about a rehearsal that Stanley Kauffmann thinks is the best Chekhov ever filmed.
It is difficult to say exactly what Malle thought Julien's role (or his own) was in the capture of the Jewish students. In the film, a Nazi enters the classroom and demands to know if there are any Jews present. Julien unintentionally betrays Jean. I wrote in my original review: "Which of us cannot remember a moment when we did or said precisely the wrong thing, irretrievably, irreparably? The instant the action was completed or the words were spoken we burned with shame and regret, but what we had done never could be repaired." Yes, but it is not clear that Julien is entirely responsible for Jean's capture. "They would have caught me, anyway," he tells Julien, giving him his treasured books.
The film ends in a long closeup of Julien, reminding us of the last shot of Truffaut's "The 400 Blows," and we hear Malle's voice on the soundtrack: "More than 40 years have passed, but I'll remember every second of that January morning until the day I die." After the speech ends, the camera stays on Julien's face for 25 more seconds, and on the soundtrack the piano is heard once again, this time quiet, sad and correct.
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