Nathalie Rheims and Claude Berri

By Benjamin Ivry April 11, 2010

Just over a year ago, Kaddish was recited over the grave of French Jewish film director and producer Claude Berri at the suburban Bagneux Cemetery, known for its large Jewish section. More up-to-date recognition is overdue, and Berri’s longtime companion, the glamorous French Jewish novelist Nathalie Rheims, recently produced a memoir, “Claude” from Editions Léo Scheer in Paris, to provide such a tribute.

A member of the Rothschild family, Rheims is daughter of the French auctioneer and academician Maurice Rheims and sister of the photographer Bettina Rheims. Berri had less artsy origins, born Claude Berel Langmann in 1934, son of a Paris furrier.

Focusing on his Jewish heritage, Berri’s early film “The Two of Us,” (1967) is a semiautobiographical look at a Jewish boy hidden during the Nazi Occupation of France by a grouchy old antisemitic villager while his “Mazel Tov, or The Marriage” (1968) is about a young Israeli who marries into a rich Belgian family. In 1990 Berri returned to the theme of the Occupation in the film “Uranus,” about postwar conflict between collaborationist supporters of Marshal Pétain and Communists in a French village. Rheims’s “Claude” confirms that while unobservant, Berri

Forwarding the News

Thoughtful, balanced reporting from the Forward and around the web, bringing you updated news and analysis each day.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

loved [religious Jewish] rituals, like those we attended at the home of Angela and Pierre Assouline. They took you back to your origins; the cooking reminded you of your mother Betty’s…

Food was a key element for Berri, and Rheims relates that he was so impatient about eating that it was necessary to order meals from the car while driving to restaurants. Equally voracious about helping young Jewish directors like the Tel Aviv-born Yvan Attal; Alain Chabat of Algerian origin; and Paris-born Noémie Lvovsky Berri also was a fervent art collector. Alain Cohen (who played a version of the 8-year-old Berri) calls “The Two of Us” a “parable about prejudice.” The old man who hates Jews without ever having met one is like someone, says Cohen, “who says he hates tomatoes without ever having tasted one.” In his exuberantly creative life, there are few of the finer artistic pleasures which Claude Berri did not taste.

Listen here to a 1999 French interview with a resonant-voiced Berri (no subtitles, alas).

Watch a video tribute to Claude Berri below.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

$90 $180

$360

Other amount