La Rafle (Round Up, The)

 

 

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Some reviews call La Rafle "the French Schindler's List." They say that it's important to *finally* have images depicting the hell that was the of the interior of the Vel' D'Hiv on July 16th, 1942. I agree. Make no mistake: La Rafle is NOT a hopeful film. La Rafle is a stark depiction of the collaborators and French gendarmes who "rounded up," imprisoned and deported at least 13,000 French Jews and sent them directly to the gas chambers of the Aktion Reinhard Death Camps. Only one photograph of this travesty survives -- a line of buses waiting to take the prisoners to Drancy. La Rafle, as the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup is known, is one of the darkest days of the Vichy Regime -- and until recently, was rarely discussed.

Upon consideration, La Rafle is *not* the "French Schindler's List." La Rafle stands solidly on its own -- both as a film and as the real-life story of 11-year-old Joseph Wisemann. This film peels the layers of the past away, and we look straight into the depths of Vichy's collaboration with the Nazis. Bousquet and Laval are shown in all their evil banality. They're polished, well-groomed and flat, while the Jews and the nurse and the landlady and the plumber who help them are gritty colorful and alive. And La Rafle doesn't flinch, when it comes to those who are "just following orders." They exist in a purgatory in between life and death -- powerless, weak and beyond the pale. (The fireman who defies evil and orders his crew to finally turn on the water in the Vel d'Hiv is the one exception to the rule.) We, the audience, watch the story unfold knowing full well how it ends for most of the participants. We cannot help. We can only collaborate in an act of defiant remembrance.

I've been waiting for the release of this film on DVD since I saw it in France in 2010. Thanks to Amazon.ca. I'm thrilled to be able to see this movie again. If you've heard of, read, or seen "Sarah's Key" and liked it, you need to see this film as well. It's a different twist on the same theme: the Round Up of Jews in Paris and the Vel d'Hiv poignantly portrayed.

This is a film that will inevitably draw comparisons to `Schindlers List', this though has a less than happy outcome. It tells of the true events that took place in France during July 1942. The gas chambers of the death camps were becoming fully operational and Hitler was keen to ensure they were put to maximum use. Quotas were issued to all of the occupied areas for minimum numbers of Jews to be transported. The anti-Semitic propaganda was in full swing in France and very little sympathy was around for their plight. The yellow star being seen as shameful, and their basic rights are slowly eroded, in an attempt to vilify them further. After being asked for 100,000 Jews, they offered 20, but in the end could only realise 13,000 -nearly a third of that number being children.

This tells the story of the events leading up to the `round up', and the subsequent crimes perpetrated against the Jews by the Vichy French Government. It was with the full co-operation of Petain that these `deportations' were able to take place as the French police and secret service carried it out, with the understanding of increased autonomy from the Nazi'z as recompense.

They were first taken to the Winter Velodrome, where conditions were far from sanitary and even water was not supplied. All couples without children and single males were sent to the concentration camp at Drancy, so everyone here had children - over 4,000 of them.

They are then sent in cattle trucks to their transit camps. At the Velodrome a Jewish doctor (David Scheinbaum) played by Jean Reno works single handedly to try to help, he has only eight nurses including Nurse Annette (Melanie Laurent). She is so taken with the plight of these unfortunate children that she volunteers to travel on with them. We have the stories of a number of families and how they help each other, try to maintain both spirit and dignity; all not knowing what true fate awaited them and still of the mindset that to co-operate might get them through. Realisation is a slow emotion and for most it came too late. The characters are all well developed, some of the French police are not all bad, but being complicit and following orders, much like some of their German compatriots.

I found this to be an excellently acted, directed and shot film. It is unashamedly emotional and I found myself moved, on more than one occasion. Everything is done with great detail including Hitler's `Wolfs Lair'. All of the actors were good, but the children were exceptional, all of it came across as being very real, very painful and very moving. If you would like to know more about Vichy France and what went on behind the scenes, there is an excellent book called `Bad Faith'. I thoroughly loved this film, though it is far from enjoyable due to the subject matter, but just as the afore mentioned Schindlers List was excellent, so is this. In French and German with good subtitles and a run time of 113 minutes, it most certainly does not outstay its' welcome - unlike the Vichy Government.

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5.0 out of 5 stars service
service super rapide .réception deux jours seulement apres avoir passer la commande.tres bon marchand je n,hésiterais pas a les recommander.

Published 3 months ago by yves

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