I watched Au Revoir les Enfants as a film about the holocaust. In my paper I will provide a summary of the film, look at the themes, and my personal reaction to it. The film was by a French director, Louis Malle. It was a true story of his life at a boarding school at the beginning of 1944. France is occupied by Germany and the main character(Julian Quentin) is sent to a Catholic boarding school. The film shows his life there, especially a friendship with a new student named Jean Bonnet. Jean is secretly a Jewish student being hidden by the Catholic Priest who runs the school. At the end of the film, the school is betrayed by an ex-cook, one of Julian's former friends. The Nazis find the Jewish students and, along with the Catholic priest, they are sent to Aushwitz, where they are killed.
There are many themes in this movie, but they are bit harder to pick out since the film itself is almost like an autobiography. The title itself has many links to the various underlying ideas to the movie. The first is the beginning of the movie, where Julian and the other students are saying goodbye to their parents. Julian missing his parents and home is brought up several times during the course of the movie. The second main connection is the Nazis killing of the Jewish students. This film showed, more than any other I've seen, the innocence of the people who were killed during this time. Another theme was that of survival above all else, similar to Night. One of the major storylines in Au Revoir les Enfants was the events surrounding Joseph, the cook. He trades with Julian and other children for various items(food, stamps, cigarettes, etc.). Throughout most of the movie he seems like a fairly nice guy, if not very well educated. He is fired when it is discovered he has been selling the school's food supplies. He was not the major thief, but the only one fired. In return for money, he betrays the Jewish students to the Nazis. His last words, offered as excuse for his role in the death of the children and priest seem to echo Night's theme. "Julian, don't be so damn pious. There is a war going on." That leads into the final theme, which was the way people are different during war and seem to think that they do not have to take responsibility for their actions. The French soldiers at one point cruelly throw a Jew out of a restaurant, simply following the German orders. The Nazis who captured the children may not have done so regularly but when the Gestapo, citing German "discipline", ordered them to, they did so without hesitation or emotion.
I thought the movie was interesting and moving. It is one of the few films I've ever seen with subtitles. The subtitles don't seem to detract from the movie's plot or entertainment. It is a very powerful film, especially directed and written by someone who lived through it. It showed how life was affected by the war, especially children's lives. In most movies and books you hear how many people died in this battle or were executed. I could relate to Julian in many ways. He seemed very similar to many of the students at Regis. He was relatively affluent, Catholic, and lived in a fairly large city. Nothing was supposed to happen to him, but it did. I would recommend the film to viewers of any age. It has nothing obscene, although a few scenes would be confusing to younger people. I would reccomend this film to anyone regardless of age or normal taste in movies.