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.