Throughout the film, characters speak about Lucien and how he doesn’t fit the profile of a turncoat and torturer. “He’s a good boy,” his mother says, rather desperately, on more than one occasion. Near the end of the film, a tortured member of the French underground whom Lucien is guarding says, “You don’t look like a thug,” and he’s absolutely right. With his round, boyish face, floppy hair, and slight slouch, Lucien doesn’t look old or hardened enough to do the things he does in the film, which makes his actions that much more unsettling. Since the dawn of time, we have been accustomed to associating evil with ugliness, which is why monsters of various stripes have held sway over the human imagination for centuries. Yet, as we witness time and again, true evil resides in the most innocuous of places, and sometimes the kid down the street who doesn’t look capable of hurting a fly turns out to have a capacity for evil deeper than anyone could have imagined.

With Lacombe, Lucien, director Louis Malle, who was following his acclaimed coming-of-age hit Murmur of the Heart (1971), tells a different kind of coming-of-age story. He and coscreenwriter Patrick Modiano establish Lucien’s dark potential in the film’s opening frames, when he takes a moment from mopping the floor at the local hospital to nonchalantly kill a songbird with his slingshot. To him, it’s a throwaway moment--perhaps done out of boredom, perhaps down out of slow-burning spite--but it signals right away that his smooth, boyish visage hides something sinister.

Lucien is profoundly apolitical; he doesn’t have a stance one way or another on the war or the German occupants. When he approaches the local schoolteacher (Jean Bousquet) about joining the French Resistance, we get the sense that he is doing it out of a sheer lack of anything better to do. He is turned down because he is too young and unmotivated, and by a simple twist of fate ends up that night in the stronghold of the local German Gestapo and its French collaborators. Lucien ingratiates himself, almost unthinkingly betraying the very schoolteacher/resistance fighter he had approached 12 hours earlier. Once he is given a gun, he settles into his new role as enforcer of the German occupation, which affords him status and power, two deeply addictive sensations he had probably never tasted before.

Lucien’s role is complicated by his involvement with a Jewish tailor named Albert Horn (Holger Löwenadler), who is keeping a low profile along with his daughter, France (Aurore Clément), and elderly mother (Therese Giehse). France is beautiful and Lucien desires her, and drunk on his newfound power, he bullies her and the rest of her family into accepting him. He simply forces his way into the family, establishing himself as a fourth member. It is hard to deny that there is a profound sadness here, not just for the Horn family, but for Lucien, who like all kids is just looking for a place to belong. The Gestapo gives him power and authority, but he also craves love and attention, which he can no longer get from his own family.

Nevertheless, Lucien develops into a deeply disturbing and loathsome character. (He is powerfully portrayed by Pierre Blaise, a young actor who was virtually unknown at the time and whose life was tragically cut short a year later when he died in an auto accident.) Lucien’s myopia and selfishness propel him into the deepest ruts of immorality, turning him into such an inward being that he cannot possibly fathom the damage he’s doing around him.

Malle uses Lucien to show that any human being is capable of “evil” given the right circumstances. Aspects of Lucien’s life--his immaturity, separation from his family, lack of direction and guidance--contribute to his terrible actions, but Malle never offers them as excuses. In fact, Lacombe, Lucien generates such terrible power largely because Malle never approaches the subject with a heavy hand. There is no preaching or moralizing, but rather the simple, sometimes heart-rending act of bearing witness.

Lacombe, Lucien Criterion Collection DVD
Lacombe, Lucien is available individually or as part of the Criterion Collection’s four-disc box set “3 Films by Louis Malle,” which also includes Murmur of the Heart and Au revoir les efants along with a fourth disc of supplementary materials.
Aspect Ratio	1.66:1
Anamorphic	Yes
Audio	French Dolby Digital 1.0 Monaural
Subtitles	English
Supplements	Original theatrical trailer Reprinted essay by Pauline Kael Supplementary disc includes: New interviews with actor Candice Bergen and biographer Pierre Billard Excerpts from a French TV program featuring the director on the sets of Murmur of the Heart and Lacombe, Lucien Audio interviews with Louis Malle from 1972, 1988, and 1990 The Immigrant, Charlie Chaplin’s 1917 short comedy A profile of the provocative character of Joseph from Au revoir les enfants, created by filmmaker Guy Magen in 2005
Distributor	The Criterion Collection
SRP	$29.95 (disc) / $79.95 (box set)
Release Date	March 28, 2006
VIDEO
All three films in the box set are presented in their original 1.66:1 aspect ratio in excellent new high-definition transfers, two of which were supervised by the original cinematographers. The transfer for Murmur of the Heart, which was supervised by cinematographer Ricardo Aronovich, was taken from both the 35mm interpositive and internegative; the transfer for Lacombe, Lucien was taken from a 35mm interpositive; and the transfer for Au revoir les enfants, which was supervised by cinematographer Renato Berta, was taken from the original camera negative. The images on all three films were color corrected and then digitally restored, resulting in excellent picture quality that makes them look virtually brand-new. The film-like image is strong and well-detailed on each disc, with natural color and good black levels. Of the three, Au revoir les enfants probably looks the best because it is the newest and the source of its transfer was the original negative.
AUDIO
All three films are presented with monaural soundtracks transferred at 24-bit from the 35mm magnetic track and digitally restored. All three are strong and crystal clear throughout.
SUPPLEMENTS
Lacombe, Lucien is part of a four-disc box set that includes two other of Louis Malle’s films, Murmur of the Heart (1971) ad Au revoir les enfants (1987), all of which share a coming-of-age theme. The only supplements included on the Lacombe, Lucien disc are an original theatrical trailer in anamorphic widescreen a reprinted essay about the film by the indominable Pauline Kael. The box set contains a fourth disc with an impressive array of supplements for all the films in the set. First of, there are two excellent new video interviews, one with actor Candice Bergen who was married to Malle from 1980 until his death in 1995, and another with Malle biographer Pierre Billard. Bergen talks openly and candidly about Malle’s life and work and is able to offer a poignant inside view to his art. Billard’s 30-minute interview is more general, touching primarily on the important events in Malle’s life and how he used them when making his films. Also included on the disc are excerpts from a French television program that feature interviews with Malle and footage of him working on the sets of Murmur of the Heart and Lacombe, Lucien. Malle also appears in three audio interviews: two of them are special Q&A sessions at the National Film Theatre in London (in 1974 and 1990) and one is from 1988 where he spoke at the American Film Institute. The disc also features The Immigrant, Charlie Chaplin’s 1917 two-reeler comedy that appears prominently in Au revoir les enfants. The transfer quality is quite good, with only a few brief rough spots to remind us that the film is nearly 90 years old (although the recreated intertitles, which look like they were done on an Apple II circa 1985, look awful). (On a side note, the inclusion of The Immigrant makes one long for a Criterion-worthy box set of Chaplin’s early short films, since the currently available DVDs all have problems of varying degrees.) Lastly, the supplements disc has a five-minute “character study” of Joseph from Au revoir les enfants, created by filmmaker and University of Paris professor Guy Magen in 2005.

Copyright ©2006 James Kendrick

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