The Old Man and the Child

the Old Man and the Child is a French film in NR & B of Claude Berri left in 1966.

Synopsis

August 1st

Data sheet

August 1st

Distribution

Comments

It is the war, Claude (Alain Cohen) is Jewish, turbulent child it does too many miseries to his/her parents with the barks. Without conscience of its “different” statute, defines by a transitory capacity but powerful the time of its impact on the spirits, it carries out the life of a child like the others where the verbal overflows on its “difference” can emerge at any time.

Sent by safety to the countryside, it finds in contact with Pépé (Michel Simon) anti-semite pure and hard petainist being unaware of the origins of this child parachuted in this countryside where one eats with his hunger far from the conflicts.

Pépé opens the arms without the knowledge with its worst nightmare. The heart of this old turned sour man seizes the power, Claude is the base of a basic principle: the natural law of the duty which one owes with his similar and especially with the children.

From the start surrounded by affection, he is liked because he does not have any more identity; it is only one adorable little boy who, by his fears and his questions, revitalizes a rural environment with the sad and accomplished destiny.

Pépé becomes marvellous “a Grandfather”, finds his voice, is disguised, sung “Lives the plonk” under the general euphoria. Claude started again the machine, Pépé lives again, radoucit, attenuates his ideas extremists somewhat.

Having as a preliminary only love that for its dog it is repositioned on the human ones, revival of the conflict but constructive debates with his/her son Victor (Roger Carel) which, in contact with the vitality of Claude, finds certain dormant male heats towards his wife.

The old man and the child (inspired of the proper memories of Claude Berri) are the apology for kindness in a pure state which one offers in a natural way to a child without being concerned with his origins.

The caricature of the Jews that Pépé maintains during film is a play for Claude who does not even know what one speaks. The Jew becomes a “father fouettard”, a fear of child who still more brings closer his two ends to the life, the child and the old man who water plays to have fear on these topics.

Pépé is a seized up mechanics started again by the most marvellous concept: the vitality of a child wishing all to know this life which it has just discovered in worst times, the anti-semitism and the war.

The inevitable final scene is by its major examination a marvellous respect towards this alchemy established for eternity.

A child and future man are projected on the way of confidence thanks to the resurrection of the feelings of an old man not believing more of anything and which redécouvre the automatism of protection, pleasure of learning by the control from a rebuilt rhetoric.

Around film

Partly autobiographical film. Claude Berri tells there what it arrived to him when it was nine years old.

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