Louis Malle (1932 - 1995, and late husband of actress Candace Bergen)made this movie in 1987, which received numerous awards, including Golden Lion, Golden Globe, Cesar, and an Oscar nomination for the best Foreign Language film.
You may remember some of Malle's other films (Pretty Baby, Atlantic City, Murmur of the Heart, Lacombe Lucien, Calcutta, My Dinner with Andre).
This review contains the spoiler.
This is the third time I have seen this movie, which I wanted to see now because of my stepmother. We actually had the DVD here for a few weeks, from Netflix before my stepmother died, but my daughter has been busy finishing her portfolio for art school applications, and we have not had time to watch it.
If you are familiar with the immense role that Catholic church played during World War II, in hiding Jewish students among its walls, you will appreciate this movie.
Julien Quentin is the character who portrays what filmmaker Louis Malle went through in 1944, when Malle was 11.
This movie will rip your heart out, stomp on it, and leave it on the ground, bleeding.
The movie opens with thee new boys being brought to the Carmelite Convent, where Julien Quentin, along with his older brother, Francoise, has been attending.
Julien begins to befriend one of the new boys, Jean Bonnet, when the others pick on him.
These are adolescent boys,with adolescent desires and preoccupations but still in short pants -- knickers and knee socks.
Some of the boys are looking at a photo of a woman.
"She looks like a dish."
"She's got no tits."
"She looks like a slut."
She looks like your sister."
A scuffle breaks out.
In other scenes, Joseph, who isn't a student but an older boy employed in the kitchen, trades jam from Julien, which Joseph then gives to his lover, the doctor's wife.
One day in Geometry class, a letter from Jean Bonnet's book accidentally falls on the floor. The boys pass it around. When it falls to Julian Quentin, Julian reads:
My dear son,
Life is very bad now. Mr. D. promised to mail this to you. We can rarely even go out now, and.......
Julien says to Bonnet:
"Your mother is up to something." The boys exchange soulful glances, clearly aware that something is going on in Bonnet's life, but Julien does not yet know what that may be.
One day, a conversation in the school provides hints.
"Is it true that Bonnet will not be Confirmed this year?" Someone asks.
"I am Protestant," Bonnet answers.
"Bonnet is not a Protestant name," the same boy counters.
It sure is, Bonnet counters.
Julien realizes that Bonnet is hiding something but has no idea what that might be, until he wakes up one night (the boys all sleep in a large room on metal-frame beds) to see Bonnet praying in Hebrew.
Julien then goes to Bonnet's locker and pulls out a book inscribed with a math prize to Bonnet, but under his real name of Jean Kippelstein.
It is then that Julien recognizes the magnitude of the danger that Bonnet is in.
At one point, the boys become lost in the woods after curfew, after a game of Capture the flag, in which Julien found the treasure. The boys encounter some German soldiers, who take them back to the school, chiding the boys for being out after the 8 p.m. curfew.
The school is cold, the food is poor, the Carmelite sisters are mean and Father Jean, who runs the school, tries to dissuade Jullien from pursuing a life of the cloth. "Are you certain you have not had any 'evil' thoughts, because 'we all get them." "Even you?" Julien asks. Even me, Father Jean says. "I just don't think you are suited for the Orders," Father Jean says.
The wealthy children who attend the school are adolescent boys who want to read Julien's copy of The Arabian Nights. They detest the school, detest their parents, detest the world in which they live in.
There are many dark undercurrents in the movie where Anti-semitic games are played in the schoolyard, and where German soldiers come into a restaurant during parent's day (where Bonnet is sitting with Julien's brother and mother), checking for papers amidst both anti-German and anti-semitic conversation.
The friendship between Julien and Jean Bonnet deepens. Bonnet is skilled not only at math but also at piano, and teaches Julien a mean boogy duet.
Near the end, the Gestapo arrive in Geometry class.
"Who is Jean Kippelstein?" asks Dr. Muller, of the Gestapo.
"No one here by that name," responds the Geometry teacher.
Dr. Muller is angered at the lack of response and begins to tear down the flags pinned on the wall, that note the Allied positions.
While Dr. Muller's back is turned against the class, 11-year-old Julien Quentin briefly sneaks a glance back at Jean Bonnet.
This glance does not go unnoticed by Dr. Muller, who then confronts Bonnet. Kippelstein is then taken, and the audience becomes aware that not only Bonnet was Jewish, but also so were LaFarge, Dupree and Negus.
The last scene ends with the children saying,
"Goodbye, Father Jean."
"Goodbye, Children."
In a voice over at the end, the voice of an adult Julien Quentin (representing Malle himself says):
Not even more than 40 years later have I been able to forget that day in January, 1944.
Kippelstein and the others who were captured died at Auschwitz, and Father Jean died in the concentration camp at Mauthausen-Gusen, along with other priests.
A++.
PG.
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Comments: 37
Peace
He had served with Rommel, until taking a bullet to the leg, then was transfered to working the Concentration camps. I remember him saying what we heard here, was a very cleansed version of what he saw.
It sounds like this movie would support in some degree what he saw there. It was such a sick time in Germany when the take over happened.
The Pianist by Roman Polanski DVD Review by Kathryn Esplin-Oleski
in the search box, it should come up.
Rhetta, Kelly, Soulskin, SHING, it is very good, yes.
I’ll post three hundred articles, then I’ll post three hundred more...