La Rafle Review

La Rafle Review - Jewish Advocate

‘La Rafle’ confronts vile chapter in French history
By Daniel M. Kimmel, Movie Maven
July 20th, 2011

A number of years ago the Movie Maven attended a screening of a Holocaust-related film with the late David Brudnoy. Coming out of the theater Brudnoy made an observation that has endured in memory. “The problem with this movie,” he said, “is that the people who need to see it won’t go.”

That came to mind watching “La Rafle” (“The Roundup”), a 2010 French film opening at the West Newton Cinema. It is a powerful, heart-wrenching film about everyday bravery and about those who would collaborate with evil. The people who most need to see it wouldn’t dream of attending.

“La Rafle” is the story of the roundup of French Jewry. Where Germany’s fascist allies, Spain and Italy, resisted offering up their Jewish citizens for the Nazi Final Solution, there were many willing collaborators in France. Indeed, without the cooperation of the French, an operation of this size could not have taken place.

Director Rose Bosch makes the children’s plight particularly poignant. In July of 1942, some 13,000 Jews were taken from their homes, not only in the occupied part of France, but with the full assistance of the Vichy government in the south. They were transported to the Velodrome d’Hiver, a sports stadium where they lived under abominable conditions. They were subsequently transported, first to internment camps, and then to the death camps. These included the infirm, the elderly, women, and children. Of those who left, only 25 returned.

One of the hardest things to bear in watching this dramatization is how writer/director Rose Bosch makes us care for the children. We see them playing and interacting with their families, so that by the time they are imprisoned they are youngsters we have come to know, not just anonymous figures.

We get involved with the adults as well, including Jean Reno as a Jewish doctor and Melanie Laurent as a Christian nurse, but the thrust of the film is how this genocidal madness would spare no one. We get ironic counterpoint as we see Hitler doting upon children at his mountain retreat while sentencing a million or more children to death.

There’s a reason it’s taken more than 60 years for French cinema to respond. It is an ugly stain on French history. Bosch lets us see the good people who hid or comforted Jews. Some 10,000 Jews simply vanished that day, spirited away by friends and neighbors beyond the reach of the authorities. However, all too many French officials were willing collaborators, providing the manpower and means to carry out the horrible plans, and we are not spared the brutality they willingly inflicted on their countrymen merely because they were Jewish.

This is a powerful and disturbing story that needs to be widely known. Unfortunately, it’s going to draw mostly those moviegoers who already know something of the story of “La Rafle,” instead of the people who have something to learn.

Daniel M. Kimmel lectures widely on a variety of film- related topics and can be reached at danielmkimmel@gmail.com.

Read the full review at The Jewish Advocate.

Visit the La Rafle movie page