Les Guichets du Louvre (1974)
Directed by Michel Mitrani

Film Review

Les Guichets du Louvre is significant in that it was the first film to depict one of the grimmest episodes in French history, the round up of Parisian Jews by the French police in 1942.  At the time the film was first seen, this was still a taboo subject in France and so naturally the film acquired a certain notoriety.  Its director, the Bulgarian Michel Mitrani, was no stranger to controversy.  In 1960, he had worked on the groundbreaking French TV current affairs programme Cinq colonnes à la une, which included a provocative look at the Algerian situation entitled Qu'en pense Alger?  There have been many subsequent films on the Vélodrome d'Hiver round-up - notably Joseph Losey's excellent Monsieur Klein (1976) - but few of these have had anything like the impact of Mitrani's.  Along with Marcel Ophüls's uncompromising documentary Le Chagrin et la pitié (1969), Les Guichets du Louvre lifted the lid on a particularly nasty can of worms, exposing some unpalatable truths about the Occupation and helping the French nation to come to terms with its shameful past.  It was not the Nazis who dragged Jewish men, women and children from their homes and shipped them on to the death camps, it was the French police, acting under orders from a supposedly autonomous French government.

Les Guichets du Louvre is based on Roger Boussinot's personal account of his futile attempt to intervene in the round-up when he was a 20-year-old student at the Sorbonne.  What is most shocking about Boussinot's story is how ineffective he was at persuading the Jews he tried to save of the danger they were in.  They resemble sheep being meekly led to the slaughter, choosing to put their faith in the French government (which would surely do them no harm) rather than a strange young man who might be a Nazi agent.  Mitrani's film powerfully conveys the cruel irony and pathos of Boussinot's haunting memoirs and only falls down when it awkwardly overplays the romantic strand of the story.

Although the budgetary constraints are painfully evident (especially in the opening sequence which is overly reliant on back projection), the film provides an authentic recreation of the era in which it is set and achieves a near-documentary realism through its sombre cinematography and understated performances.  It was a brave decision to cast two inexperienced actors, Christian Rist and Christine Pascal, in the lead roles, but both deliver the kind of raw, introspective performance the film needs to avoid slipping into hackneyed melodrama.  Pascal is particularly memorable as the emotionally torn Jeanne, subtly exposing the inner conflict and confusion that will ultimately drive her character to her inescapable doom.  Whilst Rist fell by the wayside, Pascal went on to enjoy a distinguished but tragically brief career in French cinema.

Les Guichets du Louvre may seem a tad naïve, particularly in its one-dimensional representation of the persecuted Jews, but, for all its failings, it still has considerable emotional impact by virtue of its subject matter.  It avoids the more flagrant caricature and sentiment-milking that have marred more recent film portrayals of the Vél d'Hiver round-up - such as Roselyne Bosch's La Rafle (2007) - and has its own very distinctive dark poetry.  The film may not have the impact it had when it first went before a cinema audience in the mid-1970s, but it still provides a potent reminder of France's complicity in the Holocaust and also a sobering illustration of how good intentions can fail to make any difference.  As Marshal Pétain's face stares out benignly from posters all over Paris, championing the virtues of home, family and work, we know that Paul, a shifty looking student who acts like the Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, hasn't a hope in Hell.  Like us, happy onlookers from the future reflecting on a past horror we cannot change, Paul must accept his impotence and watch helplessly as the innocents he wants so desperately to save are rounded up and led to the slaughter.  Evil must have its day.

Film Synopsis

Paris, 16th July 1942.  Paul, a young student, has just been tipped off that the French police are about to begin a massive round up of Jews in the Saint-Paul district of the capital.  Fearing the worst, he immediately sets about trying to save Jewish people he encounters in the street, but they are all stubbornly reluctant to accept his offer of help. Instead, they allow themselves to be loaded like cattle onto buses for an unknown destination.  Finally, Paul's persistence is rewarded when he comes across a young Jewish woman who is prepared to put her trust in him.  Jeanne agrees to remove the yellow star that marks her out as a Jew and allows Paul to lead her across Paris towards the Left Bank, where he hopes to hide her from the police.  But just when Paul feels he has accomplished his mission, his one small victory slips from his grasp...