One of France’s most esteemed and dignified actors, Daniel Auteuil has decades’ worth of remarkable performances behind him. Films such as Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources, The Eighth Day – which won him a share of the Best Actor prize at the Cannes Film Festival – and Michael Haneke’s sublime Hidden have demonstrated his diversity.
Now he’s back in Cannes with the stirring Holocaust drama When the Night Falls (or La Troisième Nuit, aka “The Third Night”, to give it its French title), in which he stars and directs.
Auteuil, now 76, is no stranger to directing. This is the sixth film of his behind-the-camera career, which he began with 2011’s The Well-Digger’s Daughter. Each has been a well-crafted, modest affair, old-fashioned in the best sense of the word.
Playing out of competition in the Cannes Première strand, When the Night Falls is no different, feeling like something the legendary Jean-Pierre Melville (who was behind 1969 war drama Army of the Shadows) might’ve once made.
Set in Lyons in August 1942, during the Nazi occupation of France, the story focuses on the Vichy government’s round-up of foreign Jews and those that tried to save them. Auteuil plays Father Glasberg, a stoic humanitarian who wants the Church to speak out on behalf of the Jewish foreigners whose lives are being torn apart. He gets his chance when he joins a committee to determine the fate of the detainees.
Instrumental too is Gilbert Lesage (Antoine Reinartz, who featured in the Cannes prize-winner Anatomy of a Fall), a civil servant from the Service Social des Étrangers.
Of course, not all on the committee are as sympathetic as Lesage and Glasberg. Local law enforcer Lucien Marchais (Grégory Gadebois, the highly expressive actor who can be seen in the just-released Orphan) wants evidence – marriage, medical or military certificates – to prove each individual can stay in France.
“Don’t be lax,” he spits, as he demands the requisite paperwork. Swiftly, brutally, dismissing each case if the right documents are not present, Marchais is typical of the bureaucratic cowardice that played Russian roulette with people’s lives at this time.
Inspired by real events, as 108 Jewish children were saved in Lyons thanks to the tireless work of Glasberg and co, Auteuil shines the spotlight on a group of unsung heroes who fought against directives from the Vichy government. You might even compare the film to Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, albeit on a much more intimate scale, as Auteuil examines the fortitude it took to save lives in the face of such horrors.
As you might expect, he directs with the minimum of fuss. Draping the frame in shadowy lighting, he elegantly captures the chaos as refugees are carted away in buses, as rain pours, sirens blare and whistles fill the air.
Although solemn in tone, and perhaps not the most emotional of works, Auteuil still approaches the story with a dogged determination.
The fate of these children may be almost 85 years old now, but in the world we now live in, it feels utterly of the moment.
When the Night Falls
Certificate: awaiting UK classification
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