Lacombe Lucien

Louis Malle's film about the German occupation of France is based on his own experiences during that time, when he was a teenager (Malle was born in 1932) The young man is Lucien Lacombe, and he is 17 in 1944, when the German war machine has started to fall apart. He lives in occupied France, and as we get to know him, we realize he's a moral cipher with no point of view at all toward the momentous events surrounding him. He's not stupid, but his interest in the war is limited mostly to the daily ways it affects him directly.

It affects him at home, where his mother lives with her lover (his father is missing in action). It affects him at work, where he labors in his boring job at the hospital. A lot of the young men in the town are members of the underground resistance movement. They carry guns, are involved in secret schemes and don't have to mop floors. Lucien approaches the local resistance and asks to join, but he's turned away because he's too young. He wants desperately (if "desperately" isn't too strong a word for such a taciturn character) to break the mold of his life, and since the resistance won't have him, he joins the local Gestapo. This is crazy, we're thinking. Lucien joins the Gestapo almost absentmindedly, and then this bright Jewish girl falls for a guy like that. But Louis Malle's point is a complex one. Neither of these people can quite see beyond their immediate circumstances. They're young, uninformed, naive, and the fact is that adolescent sex appeal is a great deal more meaningful to them than all the considerations of history.

Louis Malle, whose previous film was the bittersweet and lovely "Murmur of the Heart" (1971), gave himself a difficult assignment this time. His film isn't really about French collaborators, but about a particular kind of human being, one capable of killing and hurting, one incapable of knowing or caring about his real motives, one who would be a prime catch for basic training and might make a good soldier and not ask questions.

As played by Pierre Blaise, a young forester who had never acted before (and who died in a road crash a few years later), Lucien is a victim trapped in his own provincialism and lack of curiosity. Louis Malle seems almost to be examining the mentality of someone like the war criminals at My Lai -- technicians of murder who hardly seemed to be troubled by their actions. That's the achievement of "Lacombe, Lucien." But what Louis Malle is never quite able to do is to make us care about Lucien, who is so morally illiterate that his choices, even the good ones, seem randomly programmed. Perhaps to show that illiteracy is the point of the film.

Lacombe, Lucien (1974)

A disturbing and sad movie about surviving the Nazi occupation in France. It's unlike any other film of its type, turning from tender to ruthless in a breath, and from joyous to ghastly just as fast. And though the Nazis are behind the violence and fear, they play a mostly indirect role in the cornering of a small Jewish family in the countryside. This is a tale about French and French, about the Resistance against collaborators.

And it's told from the point of view of the collaborators, a gang of opportunistic thugs who have taken over an old hotel and who terrorize, with German supplied documents, ordinary citizens. The title character is Lucien, an utterly heartless but somehow, at times, sympathetic boy who gets pulled into the lure of these thugs. But he shows a scary detachment from all feeling, even from love at first, and certainly from respect for life. There is a hint that he grew to think human life was cheap from his days hunting and killing animals without a flinch as a youth, but it could be the movie is showing that he had almost a disorder, something that made him unfeeling even for the most ordinary, harmless, vulnerable things. I think the former is more accurate, though, because his hunting rabbits and killing a chicken with his hands were probably (and still are) part of country life where rabbit and chicken were part of the cuisine.

But it's people who will eventually be his target, and he is not like his older counterparts. He doesn't want the spoils of war, not money or finery, resisting at first even the suit the Jewish tailor is ordered to make for him. It is here the movie gets to what matters. Lucien is ignorant enough to not quite see why this Jewish man is any different than other men, but he catches on when others around him make clear the Jew is only alive and in hiding as their choice. I guess they need a good tailor, and they need the man's money (the tailor pays when he makes the suits, it seems). The complication of a beautiful (and very French looking) daughter takes some of the expected turns, but not completely, because this very young man doesn't really know how to behave, or how to fall in love.

The director, Louis Malle, is a legend of French cinema, and later even of American cinema. He depends on location shooting, natural light, and naturalistic acting to give every scene a believability that is both beautiful and at times uncanny, especially combined with violence to animals. The lead actor, Pierre Blase, is almost too convincing in his cool and relatively mindless determination. The tailor, played by Holger Löwenadler, a Swedish actor, is a model of patience and continual assessment, trying to play the game with the thugs for his survival. His daughter is less fully realized, with Aurore Clement playing this charming and innocent girl withheld from normal life by the war. But she does in fact learn to love Lucien in her own way, and he responds in his own way.

Needless to say, the end is tragic and rather perfect. And the whole troubling two hours getting there will leave you moved, for sure, but also enlightened. The problem of loyalty and survival takes on new light here.

Lacombe Lucien is an understated yet complex story of innocence corrupted by war. Though commercially successful, the film was judged harshly in France by critics on the Left because of its non-judgmental stance toward collaboration. Indeed, the film offers no psychological interpretations but is content to simply show what happened in almost Bressonian fashion (Malle worked as an assistant with Bresson in producing a documentary).

Based on the childhood memories of Louis Malle, Lacombe Lucien tells the story of Lucien (Pierre Blaise) a rural French teenager who, having been rejected by the French resistance in 1944, joins with the German occupiers and becomes an enforcer. It is brilliant in its understated portrait of how self-interest and pride can lead to regrettable choices.

Lucien lives with his mother together with another man while his father remains a prisoner of war. With limited education and lacking sophistication, Lucien is angered when his desire to join the underground is rejected because of his youth. Instead, he opportunistically becomes a member of the German police and soon takes on the persona of a surly thug. Malle makes clear that Lucien is neither fundamentally good nor bad, but only becomes involved with the Gestapo through a series of accidental circumstances. Though the film implies that Lucien is attracted to the Gestapo as a means for an individual without status or power to achieve a sense of self worth, ultimately Lucien must take responsibility for his choice.

He becomes involved with Albert Horn (Holger Lowenadler), a wealthy Jewish tailor from Paris, his mother Bella (Therese Giehse) who has lived in an Eastern European ghetto, and his young daughter France (Aurore Clement) who is totally Parisian and uncomfortable with her Jewish heritage. Their relationship becomes the turning point for Lucien's struggle to come to grips with who he is and retain his humanity. Though I felt repelled by Lucien's actions during the film, I also sympathized with his plight and understood the circumstances that led to his corruption. I felt he was moving toward self-awareness before the end of the film.

Lacombe Lucien poses moral questions about the point that innocence and immorality meet, and with its almost matter-of-fact style, the powerful conclusion almost takes us unaware. I found the film to be gripping and heartfelt and I would strongly recommend it. Pierre Blaise, in his first acting role as Lucien, turns in a performance of raw power. Unfortunately he was killed just one year later in an auto accident at the age of 24.

Louis Malle is a master of representing human behavior in a believable manner. By avoiding stereotypical characters, the director maintains a more intense level of suspense due to the unpredictability of the main protagonists. All the performances are excellent especially Pierre Blaise and Aurore Clement as Lucien and France. In my old age, I find French and Italian films present women in a much more interesting and appealing manner than American films where they tend to be little more than eye candy or character studies with minimal sensuality. Virginia Madsen's portrayal of Maya in Sideways is one of the few American performances that can compare with Aurore Clement as France or Jeanne Moreau in Le Notte. Male European directors undoubtedly have a better and more mature understanding of the female psyche. The untimely death of Pierre Blaise shorty after the completion of this film only adds to the importance of this work since he displays a unique talent which was tragically cut short. Weaknesses in the film are a limited portrayal of the resistance fighters and a truncated ending which did not segue well with the final scene.

Hannah Arendt's famous phrase sounds custom-made for this film. Young Lucien wants to join the French Resistance, but he's too immature. No problem, the Gestapo's hiring, and it can get so boring during wartime in a small, provincial town.

This film shocked France with its taboo subject of collaboration. They say that anyone can become a torturer. That is where this film's power lies -- Louis Malle lets us confront our heart of darkness. Devastating and unforgettable.