Au revoir Les Enfants

Another “school” film, but this time the school concerned is not “unruly”, at least not in the conventional sense.

Based on his own experience as a child at a Catholic boarding school in France during World War Two, Louis Malle’s film Au Revoir Les Enfants (Goodbye Children) concerns the efforts of the school authorities to hide a Jewish boy, Jean Bonnet (played by Raphael Fejtő), from the authorities. Julien Quentin (Gaspard Manessa), a pupil at the school, senses there is something unusual about the new boy.

The headmaster, Père Jacques (based on a real person), is an anti-Nazi and keeps a large map of the Eastern front hidden behind a curtain. He shows the map to the pupils regularly and keeps them up to date on the progress of the war.

Quentin soon works out that Bonnet is Jewish — real name, Kippelstein — after overhearing him quietly reciting Jewish prayers at bedtime. He helps the new boy and they become friends. It is a fraught situation which has to be carefully navigated. An unguarded casual remark, or worse, the action of an informer, could spell disaster for Bonnet and the headmaster.

Eventually, they are betrayed by a disgruntled kitchen worker who has just been sacked for selling provisions on the black market. The Gestapo turn up and take away Bonnet, two other Jewish pupils and Père Jacques. All of them meet a grim fate. Père Jacques died in Linz, Austria after a period in Mauthausen concentration camp.