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A Secret

Written by Edward Moran

 

Shortly before his untimely death in 1962, Hyam Plutzik, the late Jewish American poet, outlined his plans for a long poem “on the most immense subject for a poem in our time: the massacre of six million Jews by Hitler…It is hard enough to write a requiem for one man, but six million! Is there such a number? Grief ends beyond one or two or three; beyond that there are only statistics.” Though he was unable to complete this work, his notes call for an introduction “in which the six million ghosts appear at midday on Main Street”--a quintessentially American place far removed from the medieval fretwork of European city life.

I thought of Plutzik’s reflections when I saw Claude Miller’s A Secret, an elegant and eloquent film based on Philippe Grimbert’s autobiographical novel rendered into English as Memory: A Novel. It might well have been titled A Ghost Story for the way in which the ghosts of the World War II era haunt the survivors, chart their daily courses, torment their memories, and invest simple objects like a child’s toy dog or a shattered bowl with the accumulated anguish of one family’s descent into hell.

The story is told through the perspective of a youngster, François (Valentin Vigourt; later, Quentin Dubuis and Mathieu Amalric), who is seven years old when the film begins not long after the end of World War II. The awkward François lives in the shadow of what seems to be an imaginary playmate—an older brother who is athletic, intelligent, sociable—an idealization of everything that François is not. It is only a dozen years later when the boy realizes—as do we—that the “imaginary” elder brother really existed: he was the first child of the union of his father Maxime (Patrick Bruel) with his first wife, Hannah (Ludivine Sagnier). The elder brother, Simon (Orlando Nicoletti) was sent to Auschwitz with his mother when she revealed her Jewish identity to police during an escape attempt across the borders of occupied France. It is not François’s imagination at all that brings Simon to life— François has somehow become the channel for
all the accumulated shame and repressed memory that his family has tried to bury.

Can we really fault Hannah for betraying herself and her son to the authorities? That is the chief moral dilemma of this incredibly wrought film. Out of context, her act might be judged as flippant and self-serving. But considering the dynamic of the situation, things are not so simple. Hannah is deeply pained at the way in which other family members conveniently hide their Jewish identities when it suits them, especially as when Tania (François’s mother) wears her yellow Star of David on the street but conveniently removes it to pursue her career as a fashion model with a leading Paris couturier. The inner struggle within the family mounts in intensity as the Nazis tighten their grip on France—climaxing at a family dinner when Hannah symbolically allows a large bowl to smash on the floor, symbolizing the shattering of the nation’s Jewish community as well as her own family,

This film’s adept use of inanimate objects to convey profound inner realities is nothing short of brilliant. Chief among these is a stuffed dog toy that used to belong to Simon but was packed away in the attic after he and his mother perished in Auschwitz. The dog is discovered by François who uses it almost as a magic amulet to conjure up memories of his ghostly brother. Nearly half a century after the war’s end, an elderly relative is devastated when the family’s dog is killed by a car while shepherds it along a Paris street, as if to remind us how even the mundane activities of daily life will groan under the burden of memory down through the generations.

There are scenes in this film that are hard to bear—like archival footage of the emaciated bodies of Auschwitz being dumped into mass graves. They contrast sharply with the bright, aquatic imagery of the Grimbert family at play during the 1930s. Characterization is superb, with the main contrast being that between Hannah and Tania, the first and second wives of Maxime. Tania, often portrayed as a swimmer, is portrayed as a kind of water spirit, an undine who inhabits water and acquires her soul by marrying a mortal. Given the struggle of conscience that led to her eventual fate, Hannah might be considered one of the salamanders who dwell in fire.

A Secret is an excellent film in every way, one in which cinematography and characterization combine to produce a lasting imprint on mind and memory. It is a harrowing reminder of what happens when secrets are kept and impotence is felt, especially about one of the ugliest chapters in human history. A line from Hyam Plutzik’s “Requiem for Edward Carrigh” seems appropriate in commending this film to the world: “Nothing can be done but something can be said at least.”

Directed by Claude Miller
Written (in French, with English subtitles) by Mr. Miller and Natalie Carter
Based on the novel by Philippe Grimbert
Director of photography: Gérard de Battist
Edited by Veronica Lange
Music by Zbigniew Preisner
Production designer: Jean-Pierre Kohut-Svelko
Produced by Yves Marmion
Released by Strand Releasing.
Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes.
This film is not rated.

Cast: Cécile de France (Tania),
Patrick Bruel (Maxime),
Ludivine Sagnier (Hannah),
Julie Depardieu (Louise),
Orlando Nicoletti (Simon),
Valentin Vigourt (the 7-year-old François),
Quentin Dubuis (the 14-year-old François),
and Mathieu Amalric (the adult François).