Word: lucien
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Boston Film Festival. A very respectable series, including too many films to list here. The highlight is perhaps Louis Malle's Lacombe, Lucien, a new film about French collaboration during World War II. But also Attica, a Laughton film, a DeBroca film, Max von Sydow as Steppenwolf, a Boorman film, Monty Python, and the new Bunuel. Call the Orson Welles for the schedule...
...blatant moments in the film, which is otherwise scrupulously shaded and controlled. Most impressively, Director Louis Malle (Phantom India) does not soften or sentimentalize Lucien, neither judges nor justifies him. Malle's voice is hard and even, his attitude toward his young protagonist understanding, yet cautionary. In Lucien's story, Malle has found a perfect metaphor, direct without being strident, subtle and urgent at the same time. As with Lucien, the foundation for national tragedy is laid quietly, and is built upon with a terrible ease...
...rigor of Malle's portrait of the youth, in fact, makes the movie a little distant. Malle was not after the kind of shattering catharsis that Vittorio de Sica, working with similar material, achieved in The Garden of the Finzi-Continis. Lucien is understandable but not especially likable, a state of affairs that solves the film's intellectual problems even as it raises dramatic ones...
...moment of redemption and of greatest dignity is reserved for the tailor, a crusty old bourgeois who finally be comes sick of hiding and accepting the humiliation and, worse, the awkward help of Lucien. Wonderfully portrayed by Holger Lownadler, the tailor dresses in his best suit and pays a social call on Lucien at police headquarters, where he is promptly arrested. He has salvaged, at least, whatever remains of his honor...
Malle is too tough-minded to grant Lucien similar privileges. Though he flees the Germans, there will be no es cape for him. The events in which he co operated so callowly return to savage him. Throughout, Malle has implied that occupied France was full of Luciens of every age. There were so many, we may assume, that no allowances could be made for youth, and no credit given for the possibility of change...