Lacombe Lucien

Plot synopsis:
In June 1944, as the Allies are fighting the Germans in Normandy, Lucien Lacombe, a 17-year-old country boy, tries to join the Resistance. The local Resistance leader, the village schoolteacher, turns him down on grounds of age. Arrested by chance, Lucien is taken to the local headquarters of the Carlingue, the French auxiliaries of the Gestapo. There he unwittingly denounces the teacher, who is brought in and tortured. Seeing that Lucien could be useful, the Carlingue recruit him into their lawless regime of extortion and terror.
He enjoys his new power and position, but falls in love with France Horn. She is a French-born Jewish girl living in seclusion with her father Albert, a tailor, and her paternal grandmother Bella, who are living in fear of deportation. Forcing himself upon the girl, Lucien becomes protective of the very people targeted by his superiors. Albert, giving up hope, surrenders himself to the Carlingue, who alert the Germans to the two other Jews. When a German soldier comes to arrest them, Lucien kills him and takes the women to an abandoned farm.
But he knows that he has chosen the wrong side and that his crimes will be found out. The film ends at this point and a final message on screen says that Lucien was caught, tried and executed by the Resistance.

Tags: romantic

Review:
Based on the childhood memories of Louis Malle, Lacombe Lucien tells the story of Lucien (Pierre Blaise) a rural French teenager who, having been rejected by the French resistance in 1944, joins with the German occupiers and becomes an enforcer.
Though the film implies that Lucien is attracted to the Gestapo as a means for an individual without status or power to achieve a sense of self worth, ultimately Lucien must take responsibility for his choice.He becomes involved with Albert Horn (Holger Lowenadler), a wealthy Jewish tailor from Paris, his mother Bella (Therese Giehse) who has lived in an Eastern European ghetto, and his young daughter France (Aurore Clement) who is totally Parisian and uncomfortable with her Jewish heritage.
I felt he was moving toward self-awareness before the end of the film.Lacombe Lucien poses moral questions about the point that innocence and immorality meet, and with its almost matter-of-fact style, the powerful conclusion almost takes us unaware.
Lucien, the provincial teenager who tries to join the resistance and when rejected becomes a Gestapo killer, may be more innocent and ignorant as well as more brutish than the average Frenchman of the occupation; but many French people must have fallen into collaboration like this.
The determinism and sheer stupidity of Lucien's enlistment is underlined by the fact that it's late in the war: the Americans are coming, the Germans are losing, and the French resistance is inflicting daily casualties on the closest collaborators, as we see when Lucien's French Gestapo bosses get wounded and killed.Lucien's lumpenproletariat helplessness couldn't be made clearer.
Horn makes a suit for Lucien, later another: they become his new uniform, an escape from his peasant identity and stepping stone to the power, status, and money that are why he's playing this deadly game.On the way to the tailor in a collaborator's posh, sporty convertible, Malle brilliantly has Lucien try on a pair of big sunglasses -- which instantly transform him.
What comes next clinches the moral ambiguity of Lucien's role: he falls in love with the very Parisian but still Jewish daughter of Monsieur Horn.Lucien wields his new power crudely -- he has no finesse, only self-confidence and a well-tailored suit -- but he is drawn to Horn as a substitute father and to the daughter because she -- who herself rejects her Jewishness -- represents urban sophistication as well as femininity.
But upon falling for the daughter of a Jewish tailor, Lucien begins to view his actions in a very different light.Louis Malle was never a director to worry about public opinion, having ruffled feathers with his intellectual study of incest in 1971s, Soufflé au coeur, Le, he practically ostracised himself with this simmering collaboration piece.
It's now something of common knowledge that Malle drew from his own upbringing by way of motivation in some of his work, how much of this particular story affected him is not entirely clear, but what isn't in doubt is that the directors time during the occupation of France lends this piece an aura of honesty, it feels personal, and the result is very special indeed.Each individual viewer can interpret the sequence of events as they may, but just maybe Lacombe Lucien is a simple portrayal of a missed opportunity, and this missed opportunity coupled with naivety bred the wickedness that is viewed in the film.
The theme of betrayal hangs heavy in the story, and the mere fact that Malle refused to take sides with his outlaying of the story, only furthers the sense of intrigue that covers the viewer come the stunning ending, an ending that creeps up on you and begs you for another thought process.Sadly, first time actor Pierre Blaise would perish in a road accident a year after Lacombe Lucien's release, his portrayal of the title character is truly wonderful and it leaves a truly fitting epitaph indeed.
"Lacombe, Lucien," director Louis Malle's searing, powerful film of innocence lost and how power corrupts, is one of the great films in French cinema.
The Criterion Collection is releasing "Lacombe, Lucien" as part of a three film box set retrospective on Mallle's French films ("Au Revoir Les Infant" and "Murmus of the Heart," two great Malle's features in their own right).
Malle's film tells the story about a young French boy who joins the Nazis and snubs the French Resistance during the German occupation of France.
I think this film was the one that really opened my eyes as to just how horrible life was in France under the German occupation and led to my great interest in almost any film depicting the era, or even better, newsreels.A young man develops the power of life or death over others by "accidentally" joining the Gestapo-even the French police are forced to defer to him.
At the end, Pierre Blaise provides a great calibre in his main rôle and thanks to this, the film is strong, powerful and remain one of Malle's best films.Note: the movie was inspired by a real fact: during the second world war in France, a young collaborator had arrested and killed numerous resistants..
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.
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.
The complication of a beautiful (and very French looking) daughter takes some of the expected turns, but not completely, because this very young man doesn't really know how to behave, or how to fall in love.The director, Louis Malle, is a legend of French cinema, and later even of American cinema.
PIERRE BLAISE is the young man who plays the title character in LACOMBE LUCIEN, the story of an unhappy youth who becomes a Nazi collaborator during WWII in France.
It's a fictional account and the young actor was a non-professional chosen for the role who met an untimely death a year later in an auto accident.He plays a French peasant who falls in love with a Jewish girl while working for the Gestapo.
It's an engrossing story dealing with a lot of unpleasant, unsavory situations including scenes of torture and animal cruelty, moving unpredictably through a whole gamut of scenes which give a strong impression of what it must have been like for the French during the war.For a non-actor, Blaise gives a commanding performance in a film he is forced to carry since the whole story revolves around his behavior, close-up and personal.
Malle has to be commended for getting a natural, unforced performance from young Blaise and good work from all the cast members.Summing up: Although it has a rather abrupt ending, it's a realistic look at Franco/German relations during WWII.
The moral ambiguity of Lucien Lacombe, the innocent boy who happily and childishly turns into a Nazi collaborator for the adventure of being in a war, is chilling.
This was a great film about a young man, Pierre Blaise,(Lucien Lacombe) who was raised on a farm in France and loved to kill animals, even birds singing in a tree.
Lucien gets involved with the German's as they occupied France during WW II and joins the Nazi's as an informer and becomes deeply involved with a Jewish family.
France Horn, (Aurore Clement) is a Jewish girl who Lucien falls in love with and her father is Albert Horn who is a tailor by trade and he does not like Lucien because he knows he is a turn coat for the German's who hate the Jews.
The main character comes off as highly unsympathetic and even enigmatic - an unusual slant to take for Malle given the subject matter, but clearly indispensable in order to evoke his essential selfishness (since he only joined the Nazis after the Resistance turned him down for being too young!).The film is peopled with relative unknowns and only Aurore Clement registers with the audience from other films: in fact, she delivers a moving portrayal of a Jewish girl attracted to - but, at the same time, repelled by - Lucien; the actor playing her father is excellent as well.
Its inherent theme of sexual awakening links the film with Malle's earlier MURMUR OF THE HEART (1971; which I only recently watched myself for the first time), while the hard choices made by the various characters between loyalty to cause and friendship (in this case, love) has an affinity with the same director's later AU REVOIR, LES ENFANTS (1987; which also occurs against a WWII backdrop).Apparently, the film was based on fact - but ends rather too abruptly; even so, there are several powerful and disturbing sequences featuring animal cruelty and the torturing of prisoners.
When Lucien visits the Jewish tailor Albert Horn (Holger Löwenadler) to make new clothing, he sees his beautiful daughter France (Aurore Clément) and forces her to date him.
Later Albert is arrested and when France and her grandmother Bella Horn (Therese Giehse) are hold by the Germans, Lucien kills the German soldier and flees with them to the countryside."Lacombe Lucien" tells the fictional story of a despicable collaborationist in World War II.
This is a dark and very non-compromising drama/war film set in Vichy France where the childish, but "tough", young Lucien, living in a small farmer village, gets denied membership when he seeks to join the resistance movement.
But he also begins to fall in love, in his own odd way, with the daughter of a Jewish tailor while still being part of the occupation forces.Lacombe Lucien is not your typical WWII drama, this is a very beautiful but grim movie full of questions about where the limits go between something being just ignorance or active evil.
The nihilistic themes and atmosphere of hopelessness when Lucien, who seems to have no thoughts at all about what he is doing, sinks deeper into fascism, is something that we get to feel very early on in the film.The viewer is probably constantly wondering "maybe Lucien will begin to realize things now?" but instead director Malle takes us only deeper into the abyss that Lucien has ended up falling into...
The Jews who live in the small town where France and her family live try to become invisible while they eke out a meager existence."Lacombe, Lucien" is not a true story, but is based upon the wartime experiences of its director, Louis Malle.
His story is tragic because by the time he chooses to do the right thing it is too late.Apart from Malle's distinctive style this film is quite different from his other coming of age tales, because Lucien seems to lack the kind of youthful joy which Malle captures so well.
Lucien Lamcombe is the title character of this story about a French teen who joins the German police on a lark during the last year of WWII.
Perhaps they just didn't want to be reminded that many "good people" willingly collaborated or maybe the wounds were just too fresh.I liked the film and recommend it, though I must admit director Malle's style is quite unusual and nothing like a Hollywood product.
During the WWII, a French countryside boy, Lucien Lacombe, insouciantly gets involved and recruited by the local Gestapo, after procuring the fast-gained high-handed social position and war trophies, his life has descended into a limbo when he is enamored with a Jewish girl.
Ingmar Bergman didn't like "Citizen Kane"; Robert Altman didn't like "Titanic", and I tried with all my best to appreciate the acclaimed "Lacombe Lucien" but it simply didn't work for me.The story: Pierre Blaise plays the title character, a French 18 year-old boy who joins the German police and the Nazists after been refused to work along with the French Resistance during WWII.
And amidst of that he gets involved with a Jewish family, the father who works as a tailor, the mother, and the young daughter for whom Lacombe has a sexual relationship (don't even think on reading reviews out there saying that he's in love with her because he's not.
The only good soul of this film (and the great performance too) is the tailor played by Holger Löwenadler, he's the only wise guy here, the only one who isn't naive or ignorant to know what's going on, he managed to survive the war with his skills with clothes requested by the French who collaborates with the German police.
The news of the untimely death of Pierre Blaise in 1975 entered my brain in the shape and spirit of his memorable character in Louis Malle's remarkable film.
It takes a look at French collaboration with the Nazis and concentrates on how a young farm boy, Lucien Lacombe, ends up collaborating with the Gestapo.
He never seems to weigh the morality or consequences of his acts.To complicate matters Lucien is taken by the collaborators to the Jewish tailor Albert Horn (Holger Löwenadler in a great performance) in order to get him out of his peasant's clothes and into something more befitting one who works for the Gestapo.
It was hard to resist the little perks of collaboration - even Lucien's mother had few qualms about taking money from her son, knowing where it came from.While the story is absorbing, one has to be impressed with Malle's artistry in its telling and his choice of actors.
Lucien commits the ultimate sin by turning Horn over the Germans and to a sure death, but has second thoughts when a German soldier comes for France and her grandmother.Louis Malle film, seen for a second time, still holds one's interest.
Throughout the movie there are other scenes where Lucien's nasty personality comes out: his betrayal of the school teacher who refused to let him join the resistance movement, his abuse of power, his bullying of the Horn family etc., and toward the end of the movie when the German soldier takes the pocket watch Lucien stole, Lucien kills him to take it back!
French director, Louis Malle's "Lacombe, Lucien" is an honest film about one young man's journey into accidentally becoming a Nazi collaborator during occupied France in the 1940s.
Apolitical, amoral, and pretty much apathetic, Lucien is one of those stunning heroes of cinema in that he, even at his most despicable, is an engaging enigma--even to the filmmaker who creates him.Louis Malle's film is something of a parable of the relationship of French people during the German occupation, revolving around the character of a young man who joins the Gestapo.
This boy we follow as he sells out his own school teacher, gets his hands on his hope of power (the ultimate phallic symbol, a gun), and tries to woo France (the girl whose name sets up an obvious metaphor for the country itself).The metaphor works from Lucien's perspective, as the love, hate, and sometimes sardonic relationship the two have entirely encompasses the disassociation a lot of the French must have had at the time, but it doesn't work so much as a roundly developed character from France's perspective.
He wanders in a moral wasteland of his life and ends up just where he is supposed to be, a French Gestapo unit, Lucien joins not only in a wrong place, but at the wrongest of times to be serving the German Nazi regime (June 1944).
It's a motley crew full of shady characters, racists, bigots, one of which is even black and politest of them all, former actresses in insignificant films, and a dog, all of them some sort of has-beens trying to do harm to the world they're also left out of.Lucien knows no love, no compassion, no human emotion, and it shows perfectly on his face, not until he meats a Jewish girl, called France (of all names),the daughter of Albert the tailor who survives the madness of the war doing his job for everybody even the collaborationist that is out to get him.
When Americans come to France they sentence Lucien to death for working for the Nazis.Louis Malle often tested the audiences he pushed the limitations of cinematic expression.
The severe aesthetics and the subtle narrative worked very well and Louis Malle's decision of giving sympathy for Lucien in the end fascinated film.
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.
But I still didn't enjoy it, and had to push myself to stay with it.It is the story of an amoral, troubled young man (the Lucien Lacombe of the title) who takes pleasure in killing rabbits and other small animals, though early on we see that he had feelings for an old horse.