O Velho e o Menino

In Paris director Claude Berri was born Claude Berel Langmann to Eastern European Jewish immigrant parents, on July 1, 1934, making him 9 years old in November, 1943. But in the first line of the film Claude Langmann says as an adult in a voiceover "In November, 1943, I was 8 years old." Alain Cohen, who played the boy in the film, was age 8 during the 3 month film shoot that started in July, 1966, which is probably why "8 years old" was used. Like the boy in the film, Claude Berri was sent away during the occupation of Paris to live with a non-Jewish family and his name was changed to be more "French."

When Claude joins a wooden-sword fight while the Langmann family is living in Dijon, a flag containing a swastika is hanging from a building in the background (at 0:08:51 on the Cohen Film Collection BD; at 0:09:01 on the Criterion Collection DVD). Most viewers would assume that the only swastika flag allowed to be flown on dry land in German occupied France would be the German national flag (1920-1945) containing (on both sides) a right-facing swastika rotated to a 45 degree angle from vertical on a white circle in a red background. The flag shown in the film has a left facing swastika whose arms are aligned with vertical and horizontal.

Featured in Le fantôme d'Henri Langlois (2004)