Au revoir, les enfants

Fourth draft of the screenplay.

Printed wrappers worn, reinforced at the spine with adhesive tape, soiling, corner creases, small tear to the front cover, otherwise good internal condition. The mentions of the third draft printed on the front cover and title page are struck through and corrected in ink - "quatrième version" [fourth draft].
Newspaper clippings, brochures, and documents relating to the film and its screenings are laid in. A few pencil annotations on pages 22, 23, 105, and 108.

An intermediate draft of the screenplay for Louis Malle's classic film recounting a traumatic episode from his childhood during the Occupation.

"Bonnet, Négus, and Dupont died at Auschwitz, Father Jean at the camp of Mathausen [sic]. The school reopened its doors in October 1944. More than forty years have passed, but until my death I will remember every second of that January morning."

These final words of the screenplay, spoken by Louis Malle himself in voice-over at the close of the film, sum up the appalling ordeal endured by the director, as by so many other schoolboys in the 1940s.
This copy attests to the meticulous work Louis Malle devoted to his screenplay, reworked on several occasions - at least four successive drafts appear to have been produced, to judge from our copy.

Lines, passages, and entire scenes set out in this screenplay did not make it into the final version, altering the nature of the characters and the tone of the story. The numerous variants between the typescript and the finished film would indeed merit close study, not only to assess the narrative economy adopted by the director, but also to understand certain psychological and narrative devices that were abandoned or redirected.

A simple examination of the closing scenes proves highly revealing:

In the text, when Julien encounters Joseph, who has denounced the presence of Jewish children at the school, the boy attempts to justify himself:

"They're going to find me a job. I didn't want to come, they forced me."
then further on: "They treated me like a dog. What would you have done in my place? Huh? Answer me, what would you have done?"

In this version of the screenplay, Malle gives greater depth to the character of Joseph, who is in fact merely a destitute child, himself a victim of injustice. Before leaving the small schoolyard, "[Julien] sees Joseph, pitiful, being comforted by the German". The boy also adds: "I was a fool, Julien. I was a fool"  hinting at a contrition ultimately cut during filming.

The following scene, also cut, contains a further justification, this time from Father Jean addressed to Commandant Müller. The priest sets the law of God against the laws of the Reich. But this scene chiefly serves as the pretext for a final moment of shared attention between Julien - Louis Malle's alter ego - and his soon-to-be-deported classmates. The finished film denies them this final complicity:

"In passing, Julien gives his cigarette to Dupont [renamed Dupré in the film], who takes a drag. A German takes the cigarette from his mouth and crushes it underfoot. A little apart, Bonnet, facing the wall, beret on his head, rocks the upper part of his body back and forth.
He turns to give Julien a smile, a wonderful smile."

In the tragic scene that closes the film, at the moment of roll call in the courtyard, the Nazi Müller concludes his speech on discipline with the words "You must help us rid France of foreigners, of Jews."  The script appends to this an episode of terrible absurdity that further reveals the character's psychology:

"The dog leaps barking at the boys' legs. It catches François's ankle. He kicks the dog, which starts to yelp.
Muller strides toward François and slaps him.
Muller: Little brute. I'll teach you to kick a dog. What did this poor little dog do to you?
Pessoz, a few yards away, calls out:
Pessoz: And you, what are you doing to our comrades?
Muller charges at him.
Muller: "Comrades! Is a Jew your comrade? Is a negro your comrade?"

 

Other creative choices made by Louis Malle altered the interpretation of the film's final moments. In this screenplay, the farewell to Father Jean takes on a solemn dimension: the teacher delivers his famous line "Goodbye, children! See you soon,"  blows them a kiss, and the children applaud him. In the film, however, it is the children who initiate the farewell, bidding goodbye to the teacher they deeply love, while Father Jean's touching reply responds to them. The applause itself, a sign of recognition of his courage (but ultimately an acceptance of an "ending"), is replaced in the film by a chorus of "au revoir," underscoring both a helpless affection and an act of resistance through refusal of German authority.

This copy also bears a few pencil annotations, including an enigmatic but presumably significant note beside Julien's name on page 22, in parentheses: "Jean-François ou Louis Malle".

"For a long time, I purely and simply refused to tackle it, because that event had traumatized me and had an enormous influence on my life" (Philip French, Conversations avec Louis Malle, Denoël, 1993)

This project, though intensely personal and psychologically difficult, bore fruit. Honored with prestigious awards (the Golden Lion, seven Césars), it also had a considerable cultural impact. Placing History at the service of a child's perspective through Louis Malle's fictionalized memoir, it appears to have been used as a teaching aid in schools as early as the late 1980s. It lends itself particularly well to this purpose because it never comments on the horror directly: through its eponymous closing line, it conveys it by implication, through the contrast between the banality of the farewell and what the viewer, unlike the children present in the scene, already knows about the destination of the convoy that carried off the Resistance teacher and his three pupils.

Annotated copy of a version of the screenplay that differs significantly from the finished film, a testament to the creative process of a great French filmmaker.