Alternate Best Actor 1967: Michel Simon in The Two of Us

Michel Simon did not receive an Oscar nomination, despite winning the Silver Bear, for portraying Pépé in The Two of Us. 

The Two of Us follows a young Jewish boy Claude sent to live with an elderly couple in the country. 

Michel Simon was simply one of the first actors to “get it” when it came to film acting, becoming one of the early consistent performers on film who not only seemed to understand the medium but had the ability to take risks with dynamic characterizations. A career that lasted from the silent era to the 70’s. One of the few major awards received by Simon was for Berlin top acting prize for this film. Simon plays the grandfather of the elderly couple who take in the boy and Simon’s ability on screen is readily apparent as it always is. There’s a natural ease to his performances and this one is no different. Simon brings instantly a sense of this man of the country who has long lived there and pretty much is an innate product of this existence, something we will find is both a good thing and a bad thing. But let’s begin with the lacking complication of the good, where Simon is truly wonderful in portraying the overabundance of warmth in his performance towards the boy Claude. Simon is just beaming in the way he presents that the grandfather couldn’t be more fulfilled than when he is playing with this boy. He is loving every second of it, and is something you feel come across the screen to create such a warm loving dynamic. Simon has so many great moments that aren’t defined by any great drama just of great fun. Such as rough housing with the boy, or a moment of the two swinging each other on a swing. There is such a zest to it all and Simon succeeds in making that sense of fun come to the viewer, while also seemingly getting the best out of the child actor who too seems to be just having fun at least from what comes onscreen. It feels wholly natural and just wholly honest in every moment of it. 

But of course it isn’t all good, and even then Simon is great such as a moment where Claude is sent away to school where he is immediately bullied, ridiculed and has his head cruelly shaved. Simon’s reaction is heartbreaking because you do so how much he loves the boy in his eyes and his delivery of saying that he’ll teach him instead couldn’t be more reassuring or supportive to the struggling boy. With that though we have the most challenging aspect of the film and something that I think is its greatest ambition but also its greatest deficiency. Because as much as the film devotes so many lovely moments to Simon’s Pépé, it as often gives him moments of his views on the world which are openly antisemetic, prejudicial to outsiders in general and fully supports the Nazi puppet French leader Philippe Pétain. There’s a struggle here as the film is directed by Claude Berri, that depicts a boy named Claude in a situation that apparently mirrors his own life where he too was sent to the countryside to an antismetic couple, so theoretically he is just delivering his life story, and so maybe why the reckoning of this element is light, and the commentary on it beyond the depiction is somewhat limited. Berri himself seems to want to focus on the good times more but wishes to depict that nagging element. Something that should be potentially fascinating but maybe his closeness to the subject matter limited his commentary. So creates a curious situation because so much of it, and so much of what Simon does in the role, wants you to love Pépé yet he has these horrible beliefs behind him. 

Well as much as the film limits the resolution of this, Simon I think does what he can in terms of trying to kind of make you understand this man, and show that someone can be largely likable as long as you don’t bring up certain subjects, which to be fair holds true for some. Simon very much emphasizes the limitations of the man’s perspective for his politics. When he goes off on Jewish people, foreigners, communists or anything else, there’s a routine in his delivery, it is the standard statements of expectation and something he doesn’t even really reflect on. It is an old man’s rambling, sadly given the situation such mentality leading to horrible events so it is difficult to ignore. Something that the boy slightly challenges by questioning if he’s actually met Jewish people, which Simon’s reaction in these moments is perfect as it is of someone who never even furnished such deep connections to the topic as he presents confusion and naivety. An element Berri seems to be partially commenting on such as when Pépé happens upon a brutal Nazi regulation, where Simon’s reaction is terrific in showing the suddenly the old man being completely lost at such a horrible notion before being hurried along. Or another moment where with the war ending Pépé is still holding onto Pétain as this great man, to the point even part of Pépé’s family threaten to leave forever if the old man doesn’t take the picture of the disgraced false leader. We get the moment after he’s caved in, where Simon would be deeply affecting with the emotion he brings out in his performance by showing so convincingly this man who is just lost and confused by the revelations of the world around him…if one can’t be so easily detached given what he’s sad about is a man who was an active tool of the Nazi regime. So it’s a strange situation, but in all of this Simon is effective in playing every emotional beat, and creating a cohesiveness in presenting the more savory and less savory elements of this character. As he is genuinely unquestionably affecting by comparison when Simon shows with such empathetic heartbreak the old man's reaction to the death of his faithful dog. There isn't a second where the emotion doesn't feel absolutely real and tangible. And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention his scene of presenting himself as he was as a soldier in World War I, which is a terrific vaudevillian bit of over the top physical performance, where Simon is having a blast but is also very entertaining in the grandfather making fun of himself by lampooning old serious soldier self. But that scene is just another example of so much of what Simon does well with this part, challenging you to like this old man, even as his stated beliefs are that of a terrible person.