The degree to which French
filmmaker Louis Malle was shaped by his childhood experiences during World War
II did not become clear until he made the shattering semiautobiographical drama
Au revoir, les enfants (1987). Yet
Malle’s deeply conflicted feelings about the wartime behavior of his countrymen
is fundamental to Lacombe, Lucien,
generally considered one of the triumphant achievements of the director’s
career. Presented in a clinical style, the drama depicts a French teenager who
becomes an operative of the German police force—or, according to the label hung
on such people by history, a “collaborator.” Like most of Malle’s films, Lacombe, Lucien avoids simple
conclusions and interpretations, even though the script (by Malle and Claude
Nedjar) provides distinct milestones along the title character’s spiritual
descent. Fitting a filmmaker who smoothly transitioned back and forth between
documentaries and fiction films, Malle simply shows a pattern of conduct to the
audience, allowing viewers to parse the underlying pathology and the troubling
sociopolitical implications.
When the story begins, 18-year-old Lucien (Pierre
Blaise) is adrift, working as a janitor at the local school in his hometown and
lazily indulging his incipient sadism by killing birds with a slingshot. Eager
to give his life focus but not passionately drawn in any particular direction,
Lucien tries to join the French anti-Nazi underground, but he’s rebuffed for
being too young. Shortly afterward, circumstances bring Lucien into the orbit
of Jean-Bernard (Stéphane Bouy), a high-ranking operative of the local
collaborator cell. Sensing Lucien’s susceptibility, Jean-Bernard shows off his
opulent headquarters—a luxury hotel that the Germans have confiscated. Liquor,
money, and women are made available to Lucien in exchange for revealing what he
knows about the underground.
Yet even after Lucien sees a neighbor tortured
based on information Lucien provided, the impressionable young man allows
himself to get pulled deeper into Jean-Bernard’s web. Eventually, a moral
conflict emerges when Lucien is introduced to Mr. Horn (Holger Löwendier), a
Jewish tailor whom Jean-Bernard uses as a personal clothier. Lucien is
infatuated not only by Mr. Horn’s sophistication but also by the tailor’s
beautiful daughter, France (Aurore Clément). For a time, Lucien becomes an even
worse monster than Jean-Bernard, insinuating himself into the Horn family by
gunpoint. Then, as the impending arrival of American troops raises pressure on
Germans and collaborators, Lucien must decide which allegiances are most
important to him.
On the surface, Lacombe,
Lucien is deceptively simplistic because Malle eschews melodrama.
Underneath, the movie is complex, disturbing, provocative, and perverse. For
instance, Malle has Blaise play the leading role almost completely without
affect—Lucien never laughs or smiles until the final sequence—so Lucien is like
a blank canvas upon which others project their wartime attitudes. Therefore,
when a collaborator says, “War has its good sides, too,” Lucien seems to agree.
Yet when Mr. Horn tells Lucien, “Somehow I can’t bring myself to completely
despise you,” that makes sense, as well. Lucien is cruel because he was given
an opportunity to be cruel, so the troubling notion is that the same person,
given a different set of circumstances, could have gone in the opposite
direction. This nuanced perspective runs opposite to the usual good-vs.-evil
paradigms associated with World War II. Accordingly, even though Lacombe, Lucien is quite long at 138
minutes—and often slowly paced—it’s hard to imagine the film having the same
intellectual heft without any of its delicate components.
Lacombe, Lucien: GROOVY
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