French New Wave director Louis Malle was never one to shy away from controversy.
Les Amants (The
Lovers, 1959) shocked audiences (especially in America) with its frank and, for the
time, graphic sex
scenes. The documentary
L'Inde Fantome (Phantom India, 1969) provoked the
Indian government to lodge
a formal complaint with its examination of that nation's poverty.
Le Souffle au
Coeur (Murmur of the
Heart, 1971) raised eyebrows with its depiction of incest, and
Pretty Baby
(1978) sparked outrage
with its casting of 12-year-old Brooke Shields as a child prostitute. In 1974
Malle used his film
Lacombe, Lucien to examine a painful subject from France's recent past:
French collaborators during
World War II. Now available on DVD from Criterion, the film is a fascinating and
memorable look at the
ordinary men and women who chose to ally themselves with unspeakable evil.
France, June 1944: Lucien Lacombe (Pierre Blaise) is a farm boy in the village of
Souleillac who finds his
life unfulfilling and directionless. His father is in prison, his mother (Gilberte
Rivet) is sleeping with
their landlord and he hates his dreary job at a nursing home. He approaches his
teacher (Jean Bousquet)
about joining the resistance but is rejected. Picked up by the police one night
after curfew, Lucien is
taken to a hotel that serves as the headquarters for local French collaborators.
When he reveals that his
teacher is secretly a resistance leader, the group sees potential in the young man
and recruits him into
their organization. Lucien joins a group who refer to themselves as the local
branch of the German police,
but are little more than thugs who hunt down, arrest and torture Jews and
resistance fighters for the Nazis.
One of the boy's mentors, Jean-Bernard (Stephane Bouy), introduces him to Albert
Horn (Holger Lowenadler),
a Jewish tailor living in hiding in an apartment with his elderly mother (Therese
Giehse) and teenage
daughter, France (Aurore Clement). Horn pays bribes to Jean-Bernard to stay safe,
hoping one day to escape
to Spain. Lucien becomes infatuated with France and starts to visit the Horn
household regularly against
her father's objections, knowing that the tailor dare not cross him because the
power his position gives him
over their lives. For Horn, the frustration and disgust he feels over this
situation becomes intolerable
when, to his horror, France begins to reciprocate the young fascist's
affections.
Anyone going into
Lacombe, Lucien expecting a dry history lesson or a
political diatribe against the
evils of collaboration with the Nazis will be surprised to find that the film is
neither. Malle avoids
overt moralizing or any attempt to psychoanalyze his characters; instead, his
technique is to step back and
simply observe. What we discover is that most of the collaborators are not driven
by political convictions.
They are mere opportunists motivated by petty, selfish concerns. Before the war
Tonin (Jean Rougerie) was
a police officer dismissed as an undesirable; under the fascists he got a second
chance and is now chief of
police. Betty Beaulieu (Loumi Iacobesco) is a movie star whose career could only
continue if she endorsed
the regime in power. She clearly enjoys luxury and would be unwilling to flee her
easy life for exile
overseas or possible poverty if banned from working in the film industry.
Jean-Bernard is a cynic who likes
to remain comfortable and uses his position for personal gain through extortion.
He doesn't believe Nazi
propaganda and is plotting to flee with his ill-gotten gains before the political
tide turns and the Allies
liberate his village. Faure (Rene Bouloc) is a petty bureaucrat proud to get his
own office. He's the only
character to appear to truly believe and espouse Nazi racist and anti-Semitic
rhetoric; it's part of his
need to believe himself superior, much like the status symbol of the office.
Watching this aggregation of
opportunists go about their daily routine of roundups and torture without any moral
qualms inevitably calls
to mind Hannah Arendt's oft-quoted phrase describing Eichmann and others of the
Nazi regime who did their
jobs with indifference to the human dimension: the "banality of evil." One man
casually whistles "Whistle
While You Work" on his way to a torture session; a woman complains about a broken
nail while men suffer a
few doors away.
The central figure of Lucien resembles a version of the other collaborators that
has been boiled down to its
essence. He lacks the ability to feel compassion for others and is focused
entirely on his own desires and
impulses. At the start of the film he is completely rootless, despising his menial
job and for all
practical purposes without a family, since his father is imprisoned and his mother
has no time for him.
When he tries to join the resistance, it's clear that he does so not out of
patriotic fervor, but out of
boredom, a desire for direction in his life?and perhaps an outlet for his violent
tendencies. Lucien is
closer to being a sociopath than a true sadist, but he does enjoy the sense of
power over others violence
gives him. This is first glimpsed in a pre-credits scene in which Lucien casually
uses a slingshot to kill
a bird, for no reason other than because he can. (Later, after Lucien glimpses some
resistance fighters,
Malle adds the sound of a bird call on the soundtrack - possibly a signal by the
resistance?linking the
resistance fighters to the bird killed in the opening scene.) He joins up with the
fascists only because
they offer him the position the resistance denied him.
Joining the fascists is a perfect fit for Lucien, because it allows him to indulge
his impulses within a
structure that, far from trying to get him to conform to the standards of "decent
society", actually
encourages his impersonal cruelty and desire to dominate others. He gets petty
revenge on the teacher that
refused to allow him to join the resistance by giving his name to the
collaborators, and is rewarded with
the offer of a job. Later, he joins the other "police" arresting a wealthy doctor
who aids the resistance.
Lucien, a poor farm boy, enjoys needlessly destroying an elaborate ship model the
doctor's pampered son
spent month's building while the boy watches helplessly, unable to protest.
Lucien's desires include a family, and this draws him to Albert Horn and his
daughter France. This section
of the film is Malle at his best - fresh, compelling, unpredictable and insightful.
In addition to desiring
France as a girlfriend, Lucien wants Horn as a kind of surrogate father, but such a
relationship cannot
possibly succeed. The tailor is repulsed by what the boy stands for, and Lucien
can never respect Horn's
parental authority because he knows the power he holds over him. On his first
social call, Lucien attempts
to be polite, but his manners are a mixture of immaturity, provincial crudeness and
fascist bullying. He
brings gifts (champagne during the first visit; later, a watch), never thinking
that a Jewish family might
find it difficult to enjoy stolen Nazi loot. He wants them to be impressed and to
like him, but the instant
that fails he's ready to threaten them with reminders of his position to make sure
he gets his way. When
France questions him about his education, Lucien, embarrassed and a little drunk,
lashes out: "I can have
all of you arrested!" When he invites France to a party and Horn refuses to give
permission, Lucien again
uses intimidation, threatening to turn the family in to the Nazis. The dynamic on
view is fascinating:
Lucien, incapable of understanding or feeling true love, pursues love and intimacy
in the only way he knows
how - through threats, domination and intimidation, forces that are enemies of the
trust needed in any caring
relationship.
The story's big surprise is that France begins to respond to Lucien and care for
him nonetheless. This,
though, is entirely consistent with what Malle has shown throughout the film:
personal needs and desires
almost always trump politics. France is a young woman with normal romantic desires
and sexual urges that
are frustrated by her need to remain hidden. Lucien is handsome and attentive, and
his political influence
allows her to temporarily forget the persecution that casts a shadow over her life.
After the fun she is
having at a party at the collaborators' hotel is shattered by an ugly confrontation
with a jealous maid, she
breaks down and tells Lucien that sometimes she is "tired of being a Jew." She
just wants to be able to
indulge in everyday pleasures without fear, and being with Lucien makes that
possible. Her father, being
the one character who clings to his principles as a shield against the horrors of
the world, cannot accept
France caring for a fascist monster, and this sets the stage for tragic events in
the film's final
acts.
Malle's cast is flawlessly chosen. Pierre Blaise, who had never acted in films
before, is excellent in the
title role. He combines a boyishly handsome face with eyes that are cold and
intensely focused. His
performance is natural and restrained. Sadly, Blaise died the year after the film
was released. As Albert
Horn, Holger Lowenadler effectively conveys the tailor's quiet dignity, and the
suppressed anger and
frustration he feels as Lucien intrudes more and more into his life. Aurore
Clement succeeds in making
France's feelings for Lucien entirely credible.
As mentioned above, Malle's visual plan for the film is to employ a style that is
observational, which
avoids melodramatic cliches, increases the sense of realism and keeps the focus on
the characters. His
evocation of the period is very successful. He eschews the overused Hollywood
techniques of shooting
through diffusion filters to lend the past a stylized, hazy look, or relying on a
few pop culture references
to remind the audience when the film is set. The style is more direct and
immediate, and thus more
powerful.
Criterion's DVD of
Lacombe, Lucien is another splendid presentation from the
company that continues
to set the standard for the industry. The 1.66:1 , 16 x 9 enhanced transfer is
beautiful, with superb color
and detail, and the French mono soundtrack is clear and vivid. The only extras are
a French trailer and a
reprint of Pauline Kael's review which is included in the disc booklet. The film
is available by itself or
as part of the box set 3 Films by Louis Malle, which also includes
Le Souffle au
Coeur, Au Revoir Les
Enfants and a disc of bonus materials this reviewer did not have an opportunity
to view.
For more information about
Lacombe, Lucien, visit
The
Criterion Collection. To order
Lacombe, Lucien, go to
TCM Shopping.
by Gary Teetzel
