{"id":82333,"date":"2026-09-10T09:04:45","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T01:04:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/?p=82333"},"modified":"2026-09-10T09:04:45","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T01:04:45","slug":"au-revoir-les-enfants-1987","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/?p=82333","title":{"rendered":"Au revoir les enfants (1987)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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We finally get back to watching more of Louis Malle’s French work and now I’m kicking myself for not doing this much earlier. Au revoir les enfants<\/em> as it’s known even in English because Goodbye, Children<\/em> sounds terrible, is semi-autobiographical, based on events from the director’s childhood. We’ve seen plenty of films about the Holocaust but this one stands out for depicting civilian life in France under German occupation. It’s packed full of perceptive details on their attitudes towards the Jews, French collaborators, the progress of the war and much more and all the more devastating in its impact in that it’s from the perspective of children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

At the train station, 11-year old Julien Quentin is miserable at having to leave his mother to return to his Catholic boarding school. In 1944 the students suffer from malnutrition and lack of heating, though the monks remind them that they are far better off than most. The headmaster P\u00e8re Jean introduces a new student to Julien’s class, Jean Bonnet. Like Julien, Jean is nerdish and enjoys reading, but he is also good at mathematics and playing the piano, leading Julien to see him as a rival. As their beds are next to one another in the dormitory, Julien starts noticing details about the new boy. One night he wakes to see Jean standing to pray in an unknown language. He also avoids praying with the others with the excuse that he is a Protestant and doesn’t eat pork. Rummaging in Jean’s locker, Julien learns that his real surname is Kippelstein and that he is a Jew. The two become friends when during an outdoors treasure hunt they are separated from the others and spend the night on their own. They are picked up by patrolling German soldiers. Jean is terrified but the unsuspecting Germans merely send them back to the school. At the next Parents’ Day, Jean has no one to visit him, so Julien asks his mother to let Jean accompany them along with his elder brother to lunch at a local restaurant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No one sitting down to watch this could fail to realize Jean’s secret and the film never loses focus on Julien’s discovery, his curiosity about what a Jew actually is and their developing friendship. Yet what makes this so richly rewarding is the almost casual way it drops many more details about attitudes and conditions of life in that period. At recess, the boys mock-fight one another on stilts, a remarkably risky activity to our modern eyes. At one point, one boy proclaims himself to be King Richard the Lionheart, to which his opponent calls himself Sultan Suleiman of the Ottoman Empire. This little detail neatly suggests that it’s fine to play at being a Muslim but even the merest suggestion of being a Jew is taboo. In the restaurant scene, there’s a fascinating interaction between German soldiers who are just there to eat and French militia members who are hunting for Jews. When the student body is treated to a showing of Charlie Chaplin’s The Immigrant<\/em>, complete with accompanying piano and violin played by the teachers, it’s all fun and laughter. Then the ship arrives in New York and everyone quiets down at the sight of the Statue of Liberty. It’s a powerful reminder that the Americans were seen very differently back then and everyone is breathlessly waiting to be liberated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The child actors are incredible here and it’s a shame that they don’t seem to have done much else. The evolution of Julien’s attitudes towards Jews is organic and natural for the mindset of a child. At first, it’s just playground insults that he doesn’t take seriously. When he realizes that it’s a big enough deal for Jean to hide his identity, he asks his elder brother why they are supposed to hate Jews and is confused by the inconsistency in the logic. Towards the end, he can only respond with wordless horror when he realizes that Joseph the kitchen assistant has sold them out to the Nazis. The attitudes of the other characters towards Jews are varied and layered. His mother declares that she has nothing against Jews but quickly shuts him down when he asks if an aunt is a Jew. Most tolerate the Jews and are irritated by the Nazis’ intrusive inspections. Malle never loses sight of the fact that they are children. Julien and Jean need to fight against each other before they can become friends. They find common ground in their love for literature and it’s amusing that they share a moment illicitly reading an erotic scene from the 1001 Nights<\/em>. We have no way of knowing how much of this stems from Malle’s memories but this has the ring of truth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m struck that Malle made this in 1987, long after he had established himself as a filmmaker and moved to the United States. As the voiceover states, he had this story germinating inside him for over 40 years before he felt ready to tackle this project. In any case, he must have made this at the right time because it’s perfect. It’s a small story within the unimaginably vast horror of the Holocaust and at that time, none of them had any idea about what was happening inside the camps. But it gives so much context about the persecution of Jews in France in that era.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We finally get back to watching more of Louis Malle’s French work and now I’m kicking myself for not doing this much earlier. Au revoir les enfants as it’s known even in English because Goodbye, Children sounds terrible, is semi-autobiographical, based on events from the director’s childhood. We’ve seen plenty of films about the Holocaust … Continue reading Au revoir les enfants (1987)<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-films"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=82333"}],"version-history":[{"count":49,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82442,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82333\/revisions\/82442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=82333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=82333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=82333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}