tenebrisis 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.

writers_reign Even today some thirty years after this film was released the subject of Collaboration remains sensitive in some areas of France. For someone like me, non-French, no known French or German relatives and by extension no immediate family or even friends directly affected, it verges on the impertinent to discuss this film at any but a technical level. I find it excellent in all main areas, writing, acting, direction, cinematography, hardly surprising given that it was written and directed by Louis Malle. Superficially it appears simplistic in the extreme; a young French teenager attempts to join the Resistance in 1944 and is rejected on the grounds of youth on the strength of which he becomes an active member of the 'German police'. This is not unlike, say, Englishman William Joyce, attempting to join the British Armed Forces at the outbreak of World War II, being rejected on grounds of health and therefore deciding to transpose himself into Lord Haw-Haw and broadcast German propaganda to Britain. Malle has Lucien stumble by chance into the German police and, finding the water fine, gradually immerse himself. Watching the film is like negotiating a moral minefield and I don't feel it is for me - on the grounds cited above - to comment further on this aspect. Suffice it to say I found it a fine, courageous film and will surely return to it on DVD.

Cosmoeticadotcom Every so often a director makes an inspiring casting choice to not hire a real actor for a role, but go with an unknown, an amateur. Perhaps the best example of this was in Vittorio De Sica's 1952 film Umberto D., wherein he cast Carlo Battisti, a retired college professor from the University of Florence, as the lead character. Yet, not that far behind has to be Louis Malle's decision to caste the lead character for his 1974 film, Lacombe, Lucien with an amateur named Pierre Blaise. No actor would likely be able to capture the natural ferality that Blaise brings to the role of a none too bright French farm boy who unwittingly, at first, becomes an accomplice and collaborator with the Gestapo in the final months of Vichy France, in late 1944.He is not evil, even though the film abounds with moments of animal cruelty that seem to delight both the actor and character to such a degree that separating the two of them is nearly an impossible task. Then there is the utter grunting stolidity that Blaise brings to the role. Any real actor would likely have gone over the top, trying to 'make a scene' where the film dictates the character need only be in the margins of the scene. And, the truth is that there is little to be had from each scene. The screenplay is assured but minimal, but that feels right, as we sort of wander through scene after scene of evil and violence with the same lack of bearing that Blaise/Lacombe does….In some ways, Lacombe has much in common with Stanley Kubrick's thuggish Little Alex, from A Clockwork Orange, save that he is more restrained and realistic. He also never really changes in the film- he starts and ends the tale as an impassive and predatory Sphinx who could have easily become a Resistance hero as a Vichy thug, if only his bicycle's back tire had not blown out near the local Vichy leaders' home. Perhaps this is why Albert tells him that, despite his abuse of his family, 'Somehow I can't bring myself to completely despise you.' Neither can the viewer of this film, which is why the complex and probing Malle is a much better filmmaker than the obvious and often preachy works of his New Wave rivals, Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut. But, I need not even state such a case, when his films do all the talking necessary. Sssh…..hear that?

Susan This film invites us into its various fascinating plots--in the spirit of almost what is happening doesn't matter: a young French/Gesapo boy, Lucian, is crafted a suit by an celebrated, escaped Jewish tailor from Paris who is now living in Toulouse. The man has a nice apartment in Toulouse and he stays there with his mother and daughter.The boy falls in love with the daughter right away and ultimately demands her as his right. Things happen, The father's foolish action separates him from the family. Then, one day, the family is due to be picked up to go to the camps. The camera zooms in on the daughter and grandmother packing only one small bag eachLucien manages to kill the other man who has come to pick them up(the only barrier)--and he now escapes with the young Jewish girl and her grandmother-towards what? With what aim? Did they do the right thing? Did they take the right path? And those people in Toulouse mouthing those horrible things about the Jews--I understand that they weren't actors.What I can't put to rest here is the ending--everything here was on too grand a scale for me, alas. Let's see: If the father was sent to Toulouse by truck, then he most probably entered the transport system headed for the Belzec death camps. When the boy and girl and grandmother escape for a brief while (we are not told how long), they probably did enjoy a brief respite from life--but the movie ends there and they tell us that the boy was captured and killed. It tells us nothing of what happened to the girl and her grandmother, so we can imagine what we will.This film itself was sewn of a dream of a town and its people. But Toulouse, the town,--and its people and their attitudes--those have gone on. That I am sure of. I wonder how much they have actually changed?