Au revoir les enfants
Background Information
The movie is autobiographical. Louis Malle hesitated to
document these painful events until late in life. The film ends in
January 1944.
Second World War (1939-1945)
The "French Campaign" lasted only two weeks during which the German army
occupied Northern France. The German occupation of France lasted from 1940
to 1944. The Allied troops landed in Normandy on June 6,
1944. The German army capitulated in May 1945. The Japanese capitulated in
August 1945, after atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Marshal Pétain
In June 1940 marshal Philippe Pétain (at age 84) signed an armistice with Germany and
formed a (puppet) French government in Vichy, in central France. At the end
of the war, Marshal Pétain was condemned to death by the French, but his sentence was
commuted to life imprisonment on an island in the Atlantic Ocean. He had
been honored as a member of the French Academy in 1929. That honor was taken
back in 1945.
Leon Blum
Politician and writer, leader of the Socialist Party. Leader of the
so-called "Popular Front" in 1936. He was deported to Germany in 1943, but
survived and became the leader of the socialist government in 1946.
The Resistance
Name given to groups of clandestine resistance against the German
occupation in several European countries. The movement transmitted
information to the Allies, they sabotaged rail roads and factories and
sometimes helped refugees.
A few comments of a social nature
