• Mar 26, 2012 from 9:15am to 11:15am
  • Location: Walter Reade Theater
  • Latest Activity: Aug 21, 2019

THE TWO OF US
LE VIEIL HOMME ET L'ENFANT | CLAUDE BERRI, 1967
FRANCE | 87M MINUTES

In occupied France, the Jewish Langmann family realize their pose as “Alsatians” is wearing thin and decide to give their young son Claude (Alain Cohen) a crash course in Catholicism before shipping him off to the farm of a friend’s elderly parents. Enter Pepe (Michel Simon), the old farm owner who constantly rails against “the enemies of France”—especially the Jews—and his wife Meme (Lucie Fabiole), whose efforts to give Claude a nice soapy bath threaten to reveal his true identity (by way of his circumcised “birdie”). But gradually, the boy and the old man grow close, chasing each other about the yeard and indulging in other childhood make-believe. Hailed by François Truffaut as a film in the great humanist tradition of Jean Renoir, the first feature directed by legendary producer Claude Berri (né Langmann), based on his own wartime childhood, is a triumph of tactful sentiment over mawkish sentimentality and one of the cinema’s most accurate recreations of life in occupied France. For 72-year-old Simon, who won the Berlin Film Festival’s Best Actor award for his performance, it capped a 50-year career that included towering work in classic films by Renoir, Clair, Duvivier, Carné, and Vigo (L’Atalante), to name but a few.

Founded in 1997 by legendary exhibitor and programmer Bruce Goldstein (joined one year later by partner Adrienne Halpern), Rialto Pictures quickly established itself as a new gold standard in the distribution of classic world cinema—from reissues of landmark works like The Third Man and Grand Illusion to the rediscovery of little-known masterpieces never before released in the U.S., including Alberto Lattuada’s Mafioso, Claude Sautet’s Classe Tous Risques and Jean-Pierre Melville’s Army of Shadows. On the occasion of Rialto’s 15th anniversary, we are pleased to present an exclusive weekday matinee series of 15 treasures from their remarkable library. Series programmed by Scott Foundas, Eric Di Bernardo and Adrienne Halpern.

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