Die Verfolgten

A testimony about a dark moment of French contemporary history, defined by the context of its apparition.

A generous young man tries to help Jews in the day of their first step to concentration camps.

His idealistic gesture seems falls. But a young woman accepts his support and so begines a fascinating adventure to survive. Portraits, gestures, attitudes. More than a good film, Les guichets du louvre represents a manifesto. Not only for remind the atrocious rhytm of a day , the complicity of good ordinary people and the support for young couple from a man at border of law, but for terrible actuality, powerful realism, gentle story and admirable end.

A film about evil and about the inoble impulse of youth.

A very special film. For atmosphere, not comfortable truth, for acting, well crafted tension and essential truths defining a dar period of france history, admitted, official, only in 1995.

A young man having as purpose to save jews in the day of their transport to veldrome.

Refuses, resignation. A young woman, only accepting his help.

And an adventure with fantastic sparkles, in which the complicity of people with autorities becomes hidious but, for this, so realistic, the help from a pimp becomes only shiny scene and the last scene is real special.

A film about fear and acceptance, youth and connection steps, admirable as a sort of exorcism against the silence about past. .

Black Thursday:the French police are arresting all the Jews,putting them on buses and sending them to the velodrome d'hiver.From here,next stop will be the concentration camps.

A young student,Paul decides to save some Jews.Having endured some refusals,he finally meets a young girl,Jeanne,(Christine Pascal) who reluctantly agrees to follow him.The depiction of the Jew community verges on caricature,focusing on commonplace and physical appearance:one critic wrote that Christine Pascal's nose seemed to have been reshaped in order "to look more Jewish".

Everything happens in the space of one afternoon:the French people are sometimes hateful,most of the time indifferent.Only a pimp(!) -a Michel Auclair's cameo,professeur Floster in "funny face"!- intervenes on behalf of Paul and his protégée!Absolutely all the Jews are resigned to their fate,which may seem simplistic to some.

This was the first fiction film to tackle this taboo subject,one of the darkest page of French history.But as far as cinema is concerned,you will be better off with Joseph Losey's "Mr Klein" (1976).