"Being Jewish in France"

By David Hudson on 05/13/2009

"Yves Jeuland's documentary 'Being Jewish in France,' which begins a one-week run on Wednesday at the Walter Reade Theater, is more than three hours long," notes Neil Genzlinger in the New York Times, "and its emotional peak comes relatively early, when the film revisits the deplorable treatment of France's Jewish population immediately before and during the Vichy years."

"Unlike similar American docs," writes J Hoberman in the Voice, "'Being Jewish in France' is neither a bittersweet nor a triumphalist tale of adaptation and achievement, featuring a roll call of prominent French-Jewish artists, writers, and industrialists. The history is less upbeat and more complicated. Whereas our PBS sagas suggest that Jewish immigrants brought out the best in America, 'Being Jewish in France' exposes a fault line: From the Jewish perspective, France is two countries - the splendid republic of liberté, égalité, and fraternité and a vicious province of smug chauvinism."

"Even those who've boned up on Gallic history will have their eyes opened," writes David Fear in Time Out New York. "Combining testimonials, newsreel footage and snippets of cinematic representations from Renoir to Marcel Ophüls, Jeuland has concocted something close to a final word on the subject."

Writing in Variety, Ronnie Scheib finds the film "excels in examining the popularity of Vichy leader Marechal Petain and the proactive role of French police in rounding up Jews for deportation, an enthusiasm matched by the fervor with which that role was later denied (even forcing director Alain Resnais to excise a policeman from his concentration camp study, 'Night and Fog'). But the docu walks on eggshells once Israel enters the picture, sidestepping discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict except as a nettlesome complication to Jewish identity."

[Photo: "Being Jewish in France," The Film Society of Lincoln Center and The National Center for Jewish Film, 2007]

Tags: Yves Jeuland