Word: lucien
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...LACOMBE, LUCIEN...
...Lacombe, Lucien-which played at the New York Film Festival last week to considerable acclaim-is set in provincial France during the summer and fall of 1944, when Germany's defeat began to seem certain. Lucien (Pierre Blaise), still in his teens, works in a hospital ward. The cries and murmurs of pain from the wounded cause him to turn toward the window, to the summer sunlight. He sees a bird in a nearby tree, singing, and with a certain glee, kills it with his slingshot. It is almost a reflexive action, without real significance to Lucien...
Lurking outside Gestapo headquarters one evening, Lucien is discovered, hustled inside and questioned. With the same lack of remorse or thought that he had given the bird, he informs on a local schoolmaster who is a Resistance leader. Now, Lucien finds, he is suddenly and eminently acceptable to the pro-German Vichy regime's police. One of the collaborating cops, in fact, is a childhood hero of Lucien's, a champion bicycle racer. If the German side is good enough for such an idol, then it is good enough...
...Toys. Lucien is beguiled by the style in which the police maintain themselves: an elegant chateau, sleek automobiles, well-cut clothes, good food and drink, compliant women. More than the luxury, though, he likes the taste of power. Lucien receives credentials and guns, which he displays freely with a certain sullen, anxious strength. But he never entirely dispels the impression of a child showing off new toys. A police pal takes him to his tailor to buy him his first suit...
...tailor is a rich Jew from Paris, hiding out in an uneasy commercial alliance with his client in hopes of getting to Spain and freedom. The tailor has a daughter (Aurore Clement), who becomes Lucien's quarry. She is fascinated by him, put off by him, intimidated by him. Finally she gives in to him out of a sense of inevitability and because there seems nowhere else to turn. Her name is France...