Those seven or so bucolic months in the country during World War II were among the happiest of Claude’s life. Yes, the 9-year-old boy spent it in the company of an exuberant anti-Semite, but somehow that didn’t matter.
“The Two of Us,” offers a child’s-eye view of occupied France. For a mischievous, fearless boy like Claude, played by Alain Cohen, it’s a mysterious and exciting time and place but not a particularly dangerous one.
It’s also the setting for a brief, remarkable friendship that will teach Claude a useful life lesson: A person’s true character is revealed not by what comes out of his or her mouth, but by their actions.
Back in a restored print, this charming little black-and-white film is a throwback to a kinder, gentler era of moviemaking. An episodic slice of life, sunny yet unsentimental, it feels especially generous today. If its view of French anti-Semitism seems somewhat benign to contemporary viewers, it’s only because the present situation is so acute and ugly.
“The Two of Us,” the autobiographical 1967 debut of writer-director Claude Berri (“Jean de Florette”), enjoys a revival this week at the Balboa Theater, in a co-presentation of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival and the San Francisco Film Society.
Claude’s parents — especially his perpetually nervous father — are attuned to the risks that Jews face in Paris during the war. As the movie begins, they’ve already made a number of hasty moves to escape suspicious landlords and neighbors.
A child with a knack for getting in trouble, Claude is at odds with a family striving for anonymity. So in 1944 he is sent for the duration of the war to live with the older parents of a non-Jewish family friend. They are not informed of Claude’s Jewishness, for one simple reason: The old man hates Jews.
Yet it doesn’t take long for the boy to bond with Gramps (a shaggy and naturalistic Michel Simon). They are both children at heart, annoyed by rules, regimens and rigmarole.
Spoon-feeding his elderly dog in his omnipresent beret and suspenders, Gramps is a tender-hearted vegetarian and windbag who’s forever grousing about France’s enemies — the English, the Jews, the Freemasons and the Bolsheviks.
Gramps declares of the Jews, “They run faster to the bank than to the front.” The joke is that Gramps thinks he’s educating Claude with his various disparaging comments and preparing the boy for life. And it remains a joke, always and forever, because Gramps never learns Claude’s actual identity.
With a light hand, “The Two of Us” repeatedly raises the specter of racism and dismisses it in the next breath. Simply and effortlessly, the film illustrates the ridiculousness of adhering to received wisdom and unexamined beliefs, without ridiculing Gramps.
Claude is insulted and beaten up at school for being from Paris, which serves to underscore the arbitrariness and absurdity of prejudice. The minority, however that is defined, is a target of abuse. So much for vive le difference.
Without sugarcoating or sanitizing anti-Semitism, this timeless film gently reminds us that people are more substantial and compassionate than their positions might lead us to believe.
Berri discovered Cohen at a Hebrew school in Paris. Cohen continued to act on and off in movies as an adult while pursuing careers as an architect and, now, as a supplier of fruits and vegetables to high-end restaurants. He can currently be seen playing an unhappy womanizer in “Happily Ever After,” a buoyant relationship drama directed by Jewish filmmaker Yvan Attal and produced by Berri.
“The Two of Us” is playing through Wednesday, July 13 at the Balboa Theater, 3630 Balboa St. at 37th Ave, S.F. (415) 221-8184.