Lacombe, Lucien

A part of this view­ing list: Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion Spine #329: Louis Malle’s Lacombe, Lucien.

Lacombe, Lucien is a film inten­tion­al­ly filled with sym­bols, almost alle­gor­i­cal in effect, per­tain­ing to issues about the loy­al­ty and respon­si­bil­i­ty of French civil­ians dur­ing the Ger­man occu­pa­tion in World War II. Lucien is nec­es­sar­i­ly the most nuanced char­ac­ter, since the film cen­ters on his expe­ri­ences, yet Pierre Blaise’s stone-faced por­tray­al and assym­met­ric dia­logue ini­tial­ly cre­ate a very unsym­pa­thet­ic view his per­son­al­i­ty.

He’s still ado­lesc­ing, but his peas­ant upbring­ing ensures that he is a bit bet­ter equipped to fend for him­self than might be expect­ed. Death sur­rounds him, he acts as its instru­ment through most of the film, killing birds and rab­bits, haul­ing a dead horse, deliv­er­ing up his towns­folk to be tor­tured, going on raids and con­stant­ly exam­in­ing or clean­ing his guns. Yet dur­ing all of this, Malle leaves hints both sub­tle and not so sub­tle that Lucien will ulti­mate­ly be death’s vic­tim.

Lucien ini­tial­ly attempts to join the Under­ground, but is reject­ed because he is too young and untried. He even­tu­al­ly gets picked up by some French who are work­ing as Ger­man police, is ques­tioned and then brought into the orga­ni­za­tion. Malle seems to delib­er­ate­ly make it appear that Lucien is hook­ing up with gang­sters, the same sym­bols attach­ing to his sta­tus with­in the group as we might see in The Pub­lic Ene­my or Good­fel­las, a first suit, a first gun, etc. He even los­es his vir­gin­i­ty to the ugly maid Marie.

It is the gain­ing of his suit that caus­es Lucien to ques­tion his loy­al­ties. The tai­lor, Albert Horn, is a rich Jew who has man­aged to keep away from the Ger­mans for most of the war, main­ly by brib­ing a French Gestapo agent to keep him safe. We hear a piano play­ing in the back­ground, but we don’t see the pianist [although we know she pret­ty much has to be a beau­ti­ful young Jew­ess] until Lucien returns for a fit­ting. Even then there is very lit­tle reac­tion to their first sights of each oth­er, but we sense a perk­ing of ears and oth­er things. Lucien uses his Gestapo clout to bul­ly his way into their lives in pur­suit of the Jew­’s daugh­ter who hap­pens to be named…France.

This seems laugh­able because it is so bla­tant, but it allows Malle to ulilize dou­ble enten­dre to mag­nif­i­cent affect. In Lucien’s dis­cus­sions with Albert, it is hard to deter­mine whether they are talk­ing about France the coun­try, France the woman or both. As cul­tured Parisians, the Horns are polite but wary of Lucien’s pres­ence, and the nev­er-end­ing patience of Mon­sieur Horn adds a healthy dose of fear to the equa­tion, since only a man who knows that Lucien holds the pow­er to hand them over could take so much churl­ish­ness.

Despite all of this, Lucien means well, he just knows no bet­ter. I start­ed out the movie with a healthy dose of dis­like for him, but by the end he is quite sym­pa­thet­ic. He thinks he does an excel­lent job hid­ing his emo­tions, and using mis­di­rec­tion in speech to fur­ther obscure his feel­ings, but every­one can read him like a book. Even in the moments when he is off in the coun­try won­der­ing to him­self, and hid­ing from the pur­suit of France we can tell that he is yearn­ing for something…perhaps a France that will pro­vide him with ful­fill­ment.

• Could­n’t real­ly find much for this film.