Lacombe, Lucien - Criterion Collection
by Louis Malle
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DVD details
Actor: Aurore Cl?ment, Holger L?wenadler, Pierre Blaise, St?phane Bouy, Therese GiehseDirector: Louis Malle
Brand: Image Entertainment
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language); French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 1.0; German (Original Language); English (Subtitled)
Format: Color, DVD-Video, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.66:1
Running Time: 138 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-03-28
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Criterion
DVD Reviews of Lacombe, Lucien - Criterion Collection
DVD Review: 3 stars out of 4
Summary: 4 Stars
The Bottom Line:
A thoughtful and intelligent (if somewhat slow) look at a colloborator, Lacombe Lucien is a fine film for those who are interested in World War II or French cinema, but dilletantes may wish to find a movie with more action.
DVD Review: A stunning portrayal of humanity at its weakest...
Summary: 5 Stars
A few months back I had the privilege of catching Louis Malle's masterful `Au Revoir Les Enfants' and I was immediately smitten. His command of the material is nearly flawless, and his inspired subject matter is as heartbreaking as it is heartwarming. He has the ability to transcend the boundaries of film by presenting the audience with a complex moral debate, and `Lacombe, Lucien' is no exception. Just as haunting, but slightly less commanding, `Lacombe, Lucien' is an extremely well crafted character study that is as controversial as it is important.
The film takes place during the summer of 1944 in a small town in France. A young teen named Lucien attempts to join the resistance but is rejected due to his age. Feeling betrayed and embittered Lucien makes a grave choice; to turn his back on his friends and join the Gestapo. Never fully understanding the weight of his decisions, Lucien lives his new life like it were a right, taking what he feels he deserves and holding his power over the heads of those in his way. He forms a relationship of sorts with a Jewish tailor and his beautiful daughter, whom Lucien takes a liking to. His morals are conflicted by his new situation, and his choices thereafter cause a huge rift in his life.
Delicately directed, `Lacombe, Lucien' is a very graceful film, despite its dark subject. It flows fluidly, never dragging or testing our patience. The weight of the material is always felt, but it never becomes a burden as Malle knows well how to balance out the darkness with the light.
My one slight concern with the film falls in the line of Lucien himself. Pierre Blaise (who looks a lot like a young Ray Liotta) is not an actor (or at least he wasn't at the time) and while he possesses an odd naturalness that compliments his character, he also lacks the technical proficiency that would have elevated his character. There are moments of silence that would have been drastically uplifted had he known what to do with his face, but instead Blaise wears the same mask of indifference throughout the film. This is effective during the films center scenes, where his head is big and his cruelty is dominant; but as the film closes and his emotional conflictions become the films focus I was put off by Blaise's lack of depth.
Fairing much greater are Aurore Clement and Holger Lowenadler. Lowenadler is fascinating as Albert. He captures this mans desire to reach this child without contaminating his daughter in the process, and Clement is marvelous as France, allowing the actions of Lucien to affect her personally. She wears her every emotion clear to us. We can see her mix of disgust and fascination as she battles her own attraction to Lucien. It's a very intimate and effective performance.
In the end the film is fascinating to say the least. The script is brilliantly written. It flows masterfully, complete with a beautiful rise and fall that keeps us glued to the seat. One is left with many questions to ask about their own feelings and beliefs. Free choice is a gift that one's often misuse, but misuse has price.
DVD Review: Good film
Summary: 3 Stars
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 Fran?ois Truffaut. But, I need not even state such a case, when his films do all the talking necessary. Sssh.....hear that?
DVD Review: Complex character study
Summary: 4 Stars
In occupied France during the final days of World War II, young Lucien (Pierre Bliase) becomes a collaborator with the French police. This is a fascinating character study since director Louis Malle resists any contrivance to make the boy sympathetic or reduce his complexity to some easily understood platitude. Unwelcome at home, he seems to be largely motivated by an understandable desire to belong to some group, yet we also see, right from the beginning, his casual cruelty to animals. It may seem heartless for the local leader of the Resistance to reject his request to join the struggle, but when we see the ease with which he abuses his power later, we are forced to conclude that it may have been the correct decision. In the end, when he appears to be acting more morally, is it really motivated by the pangs of conscience or is it a thoughtless shifting of allegiance to avoid being alone? This film gives us much to consider.DVD Review: Essential Viewing
Summary: 5 Stars
The master's touch of director Louis Malle is at work in "Lacombe, Lucien", one of the best and yet, apparently least venerated films of the 1970's.
Malle's masterstroke was to approach the German gestapo and its tentacles, the French collaborators, as a type of Mafia organization. Thus, this film can be seen as more a precursor of films like "Good Fellas" than "Schindler's List". It's the simple story of a boy who falls in with a gang of thugs--who in this case are the German police.
Pierre Blaise was an excellent and brave choice to play the boy, Lucien, because Blaise was an untrained and untried actor of seventeen. The raw crudeness he brings to the character is authentic--Blaise, according to observers, was unsure of himself and resentful of the film crew. He truly "did not like being talked down to", both in the film and in real life. With his guarded expressions, clumsy attempts at being a 'tough guy', and inarticulateness, Blaise nearly resembles a very young version of Charles Bronson.
Lucien, of course, is a character who is not fully formed into adulthood, and this sets up the central tension in the film, which is a kind of Faustian struggle for his soul. The angel of Lucien's "better nature" is his Jewish girlfriend, "France", played by Aurore Clement. Clement brings a fresh-faced beauty (equal to present day actress Gwyneth Paltrow's) to her character, who holds out the possibility of freeing up Lucien's emotions.
In the final frames, Clement and Blaise flee to the countryside and cavort in brief, fleeting glimpses of idyllic bliss. Like the outlaws in "Bonnie and Clyde", the characters are revealed as doomed in these haunting last scenes.
Strangely enough, the young actor Pierre Blaise perished in an auto accident only a year after this movie was completed.
Description of Lacombe, Lucien - Criterion Collection
One of the first French films to address the issue of collaboration during the German Occupation, Louis Malle's brave and controversial Lacombe, Lucien traces a young peasant's journey from potential Resistance member to Gestapo recruit. At once the story of a nation and one troubled boy's horrific coming of age, the film is a disquieting portrait of lost innocence and guilt.General DVDs
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