The film historian Nicola Mazzanti has served, amongst other roles, as director of the Royal Film Archive in Brussels. Here I am transcribing the notes I’ve kept on discussions about great films. Today: Lacombe Lucien, by Louis Malle.
The title itself Lacombe Lucien?
It echoes the way a person’s identity is recorded in a police report: surname, then first name. The whole film is already encapsulated there. Lacombe Lucien is a reflection — to borrow Hannah Arendt’s phrase — on the banality of evil.
What does the screenplay owe to Patrick Modiano?
The choice of Modiano seems both clear and logical given that the film is set in France under the Occupation. As is often the case with Louis Malle, the screenplay is extremely intelligent and subtle. It is never a ‘thesis-driven’ screenplay: everything is conveyed through details, allusions and brief lines of dialogue. Louis Malle explained that they had wanted to tell a story that could have happened — and which, in a way, had happened. Together with Modiano, he worked from fragments drawn from several stories and characters of the period. The screenplay was the result of this collaborative effort.
Does the rejection of Manichaeism make Lucien likeable?
Frankly, I feel no sympathy for him at all. The only moment when he might almost elicit some is when the epilogue reveals that he was executed by the Resistance: one then thinks that, in the end, things took their natural course. But one doesn’t really manage to hate him either, because there is almost nothing to hate. Lucien is empty. He has no ideology, no structured anti-Semitism, no genuine fascist conviction. He is nothing. I inevitably find myself returning to Hannah Arendt. We’d like to peer into the abyss represented by the fascism and totalitarianism of the last century in order to understand; yet we don’t understand, because sometimes there is nothing to understand. This is precisely what makes the film so difficult to accept: these people are not monsters. We desperately need to regard them as such, because it is a way of protecting ourselves and being able to say: ‘That’s not us.’ After the war, Adenauer claimed that the Nazis had been nothing more than a small minority. That doesn’t hold water. They were not a handful of madmen or criminals alien to humanity. They were our neighbours. The war in Yugoslavia reminded us of this once again: a schoolteacher could leave his school and, almost overnight, take part in the massacre of Bosnians. Lucien Lacombe finds himself, by chance, among the French auxiliaries of the German police. He is asked to join them and replies, in essence: ‘Why not?’ But, naturally, things are never quite that simple. In this highly subtle screenplay, Louis Malle allows the class struggle to surface. Lucien’s position within a bourgeois and highly structured French society remains a constant presence, as does the lack of prospects available to this young man. None of this justifies his actions. The film never seeks to justify the unjustifiable: it observes these individuals and simply states that this is how they were. The terrible thing is precisely that there is no serial killer here, nor any identifiable monster.
Can we speak of an ideological trajectory in Louis Malle’s work?
I’m not sure there is an ideological trajectory in his work, strictly speaking. Louis Malle was directly shaped by certain experiences he had during the war, notably the one that would much later become Au revoir les enfants. He also had a difficult relationship with the bourgeoisie and with the social milieu from which he came. But above all, he belonged to a generation that struggled to emerge from the Second World War and found itself almost immediately confronted with the wars in Indochina and Algeria. It is no coincidence that this generation went on to make some of the most powerful films about fascism, its nihilism and the scars it leaves behind. Le Feu follet and Lacombe Lucien are, in this respect, two remarkable works. They tackle extremely difficult subjects – particularly in France at that time – but do so with remarkable intelligence. Louis Malle never forces the issue, in either film. When I was looking through the synopses of Feu follet, I noticed that almost none of them really brought out its historical background. The central character bears the scars of the colonial wars, and some of his former comrades are linked to the OAS, the terrorist organisation that, amongst other things, attempted to assassinate de Gaulle. An entire generation emerges from the war and a nihilistic ideology; Alain Leroy eventually commits suicide. Lucien Lacombe, however, does not take his own life — that would require a self-awareness he lacks. He finds himself by chance in the German police force, then just as fortuitously finds himself having to flee with a woman. I wouldn’t even say he’s protecting her: he’s simply escaping.
Is Lucien still a child?
The character’s exact age isn’t very clear, but he is obviously very young. Mentally, he’s still a little boy; intellectually, he’s perhaps five years old. This also ensures that he has no real past. Other characters in the film do have one, notably Jean-Bernard, the man who introduces him to the world of collaborators and helps him discover the power that comes with belonging to the ‘French Gestapo’. Jean-Bernard comes from somewhere: he wants to become rich and powerful. Lucien, on the other hand, comes from nowhere. He invents himself on the day when, for reasons that are almost incomprehensible, he decides to join the German police.
What effect did the choice of Pierre Blaise – who was not an actor – have?
Pierre Blaise was discovered following an open casting call. The coincidence between his own fate and that of Lucien is, of course, unsettling: shortly after the film was made, he died in a senseless car crash, at the wheel of a car he’d bought with his fee. He plays this emptiness very well. He reveals almost nothing, seems to feel nothing. From his very first appearance, it is clear that the character is completely obtuse: there is nothing behind his eyes or behind his face. Physically, Pierre Blaise was perfectly suited to the role. He could undoubtedly have pursued a career, but it came to an end almost immediately. Louis Malle also introduces Aurore Clément. France Horn is a singular character: it is not easy to understand why this young woman falls in love with Lucien. One can understand it, of course, but the role is neither easy to play nor even to accept. Aurore Clément plays it remarkably well, as always. A few years later came Les Rendez-vous d’Anna.
How does the cinematography extend this perspective?
The cinematography is by Tonino Delli Colli. His work is very subtle, very measured, without any spectacular effects or lighting: the camera remains detached and matter-of-fact. It is no doubt no coincidence that Delli Colli went on to shoot Pasolini’s Salò shortly afterwards. In it, he films one of the most monstrous works in the history of cinema with a terrifying detachment. Both films depict evil without exaggeration, but Salò adds a certain vulgarity to its banality. Lacombe Lucien is a typically French film: it speaks very clearly about French fascism. Salò, on the other hand, is a typically Italian film, which never ceases to address Italian fascism.
How does Milou en mai deal with May ’68?
French society is one of Louis Malle’s recurring themes, and Milou en mai offers one of its final chapters. Like all intelligent filmmakers, he addresses issues obliquely, almost tangentially. He evokes May ’68 through the minor crisis affecting a family brought together by the death of their mother: the rivalries over the inheritance, ownership of the house, and a bourgeois world that is beginning to falter. It is yet another extremely intelligent film, which appears to be telling a different story from its true subject. One gets the impression that Louis Malle is more or less taking the same characters and changing the backdrop behind them. This time, that backdrop is May ’68. The film is loosely based on The Cherry Orchard; his final feature film, Vanya, 42nd Street, will return even more directly to Chekhov, whilst also portraying him in an oblique manner.
What does Michel Piccoli represent in this later phase of Malle’s filmography?
It is very difficult to imagine Michel Piccoli in the role of a truly unsympathetic character. Of course, he must have played such roles, but he is not the most obvious choice when casting for a frankly unpleasant part. Louis Malle’s later films feature several very fine portrayals of ageing men. I am thinking in particular of Atlantic City, one of the great romantic films in the history of cinema — although I must admit I saw it when it was first released and have never watched it again since. There are also such characters in Vanya, 42nd Street, whether it be the director or, naturally, Uncle Vanya. Perhaps it is difficult for a filmmaker to portray a character of his own age and make him utterly repulsive. In Milou en mai, on the contrary, Piccoli plays a mature and endearing man, a sort of poet confronted with the absurdity of existence yet unwilling to let it consume him.
Is a shattered childhood the underlying theme of his work?
One can certainly interpret the films in this way, but I’m not sure that’s the only way. I’d say rather that Louis Malle needs characters with a past who, for social or historical reasons, find themselves in situations that are neither easy nor straightforward. Lacombe Lucien clearly belongs to this vein, and I would add Le Feu follet to the list, which is also deeply socio-historical. What I find particularly fascinating is that Louis Malle almost always chose to tackle issues that French society at the time had little desire to discuss.
This cannot be entirely coincidental: almost all his films touch on a subject that France would prefer to avoid. He tackles collaborationism, incest, paedophilia, deportation and suicide. One can always resort to euphemisms and invoke the ‘freedom to provoke’ defended a few months earlier in the open letter signed, amongst others, by Catherine Deneuve. But let’s call a spade a spade. Brooke Shields was only eleven years old during the filming of La Petite. She was obviously not Louis Malle’s victim; she was her mother’s, which is another story altogether. The film nevertheless depicts paedophilia within a certain social class. I don’t know where this consistently recurring theme comes from, but one sometimes gets the impression that Louis Malle used to ask himself: ‘How can I rile up France yet again?’ Then he’d go on to make his next film. However, he never did so in a simplistic way, for he was an extremely intelligent filmmaker
Is Louis Malle more revolutionary than the New Wave?
Louis Malle does not belong to the New Wave, and that is perhaps an advantage. The New Wave very quickly became an ‘-ism’, and ‘-isms’ are always dangerous. With the exception of Godard, for whom revolutionary language becomes a revolution in language, its filmmakers often make films that are far more conventional, even conservative, than is generally acknowledged. After all, the New Wave’s great discovery is Hollywood classicism. It is a bit like Romanticism rediscovering the Greeks and Greek poetry. Godard revolutionises language to bring about the revolution; the others, quite often, are primarily interested in making an American film noir. Louis Malle, a more discreet man, may well have made more revolutionary films precisely because he did not belong to that movement.
