Film presented by RENATO BERTA
Three Jewish children, clandestinely hosted by a Catholic boarding school, have been snitched on and are taken away, with the director of the school, by Gestapo thugs. In the career of Louis Malle this is, after Le souffle au coeur (1971), his second explicitly autobiographical film, the one closest to Truffaut. Emotionally engrossing, set in the France of Pétain like Lacombe Lucien (1974), it is important for its care for details and settings, its richness of invention, its page of high educational rhetoric (the homily of the priest-director) and a heartbreaking epilogue. Leone d’Oro at Venice, 1987 (Morandini).
«Now that the film is finished, I realize that what I have recounted is not exactly what happened. I have kept faith with my recollections, well aware that they contain a part that is invented. To simplify, let’s say that the film is a bit like how I would have liked things to have been. In the film my relationship with Bonnet is more complicated and interesting than it actually was, because then we had no time. I suppose that one of the components of my memories is the sense of guilt this engendered, which has certainly influenced by life». (Louis Malle). Leone d’Oro at the Venice Film Festival, 1987, 7 Césars in 1988 – Best film, Director, Screenplay, Photography, Sound, Set design and Editing. Nominated for Best Foreign Film at the 1988 Oscars.
