For Berri, who'd go on to "Jean de Florette" and other successes, this first film was personal: a lightly fictionalized account of his own experiences as an 8-year-old in German-occupied France, when his parents sent him to live with an elderly Catholic couple in the country. Not only didn't they know the boy was Jewish, the old man was a vociferous anti-Semite, but "The Two of Us" makes it clear that bigotry founded on ignorance is very different from the bigotry built on hate.

More to the point, young Claude (Alain Cohen) is resourceful and impudent, asking Pepe (Michel Simon ) what a Jew looks like only to point out that, well, the old man has a big nose and curly hair too. In his last major role, the great Simon ("Boudu Saved From Drowning" ) is as uncontainable and uncategorizable as ever, an overgrown child who contradicts his odious comments with shambling life force.

In other hands, "The Two of Us" might have been kitsch, but Berri, the cast, and a clear-eyed knowledge of the terrors off-screen ground the film and keep it honest. It's a great tweener introduction to foreign-language classics, as well as to the complexities that Hollywood boils out of its own movies. And the dog in the film is one of the screen's all-time great mutts.