Lacombe, Lucien **** (1974, Pierre Blaise, Aurore Clément, Holger Löwenadler) – Classic Movie Review 4506

Co-writer/ director Louis Malle’s 1974 French wartime drama stars Pierre Blaise as the French peasant teenager Lucien Lacombe who lives in small town in the south-west of France, while his father is a prisoner of war in Germany. Lucien is rejected by the French Resistance in the summer of 1944 during World War Two, and instead joins the Nazis, working for the German police.

While his mother dates her employer, he then meets France Horn (Aurore Clément), the daughter of a rich Jewish tailor, and moves in with the family.

[Spoiler alert] His actions lead to the death of the Horn family father Holger Löwenadler), but he rescues the daughter, whom he loves, and the grandmother.

In France, Malle was inevitably and ferociously attacked for speaking about the then virtually taboo subject of French wartime collaboration with the Nazis, and he promptly left France to live and work in America.

But, politics apart, most people agree that this film achieves a greatness rarely found in cinema.

Malle’s striking success is in conjuring up the Forties period details, the wartime mood and the small-town atmosphere of the time, and in eliciting some very special acting.

Also in the cast are Gilberte Rivet, Jacques Rispal, Thérèse Giehse, Stéphane Bouy, Loumé Jacobesco, René Bouloc, Pierre Decazes, Jean Rougerie, Cécile Ricard, Ave Ninchi and Jacqueline Staup.

Lacombe, Lucien forms the middle companion piece to Malle’s Le Souffle au Coeur (1971) and Au Revoir Les Enfants (1987).

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 4506

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