In Louis Malle's lauded drama, Lucien Lacombe is a young man living in rural France during World War II who seeks to join the French Resistance. When he is rejected due to his youth, the resentful Lucien allies himself with the Nazis and joins the Gallic arm of their Gestapo. Lucien grows to enjoy the power that comes with his position, but his life is complicated when he falls for France Horn, a beautiful young Jewish woman.
Pierre Blaise Aurore Clément Holger Löwenadler Therese Giehse Stéphane Bouy Loumi Iacobesco René Bouloc Jean Rougerie Pierre Decazes Jacqueline Staup Cécile Ricard Ave Ninchi Pierre Saintons Jacques Rispal Gilberte Rivet Jean Bousquet Franz Rudnick Jean-Louis Blum Claude Marcan Jean Maurat Gabriel Cabessut Mimi Juskiewenski Albert Tillet René Thauran Philippe Henriot Jean Mourat Roger Riffard Walter Seldmayer René Thouron
라콤 루시앙, Lacombe Lucien - ystävät ja viholliset, Håndlangeren, Eponymo: Lacombe, Onoma: Lucien, Λακόμπ, Λουσιέν, ルシアンの青春, Dømt som forræder, Lacombe Lucien, o Colaboracionista, Lacombe, Lucien, Cognome e nome: Lacombe Lucien, Лакомб Люсьен, 拉孔布·吕西安, Люсиен Лакомб
USA
New York Film Festival
France
Netherlands
South Korea15
NetherlandsAL
France
Netherlands
South Korea
USA
One of the two or three 1970’s World War II films that’s worth a damn (most of the time that decade they got WWII wrong). Disaffected 17-year old Lucien Lacombe (Pierre Blaise) toils as a farmhand or mops an old folk’s ward, the second job is where he obviously doesn’t care about old people. Based on his age, he is denied acceptance to join the French Resistance when word is German occupancy is coming to occupy his southwest France countryside province, circa June 1944. When he finds his way working for the Gestapo where he treated like a grown-up, he believes he has found his way in the world.
He will betray his own people, find ways to flex his…
Here's a prime example of a film that I thought was objectively great, but couldn't engage with that much. It's a brave one for sure. Lucien's motives for joining the nazis were portrayed in a poignant way; no defined ideology, just frustration and power. I also really admired the carefully nuanced storytelling and Malle's thoughtfully viscous direction - never flashy, always sharp. But all in all, admiration was the only primary feeling that I got from this.
For some reason, all of this film still kept me at arm's length the whole time, so I can't rate it any higher. Especially the romance aspect felt weirdly clumsy. Additionally, I had too little tolerance for the amount of animal cruelty in the first act, no matter what symbolism or character-building it may provide, I just get distanced and can't help it.
Ultimately, this is one of those films that I can respect easily before I love it. Set in Nazi-occupied France, Lacombe, Lucien tells the story of a young man (boy, really) who decides to end his typical rural existence when he is rejected by the local Resistance militia. Using his information to rat out a Resistance leader to the police, Lucien becomes a part of the German "in" crowd. The funny thing is that, still being a boy, he does not care much for political gain. He enjoys knowing that people cannot push him around, and he really enjoys a local Jew's daughter. Yep, Lucien realizes that with some German muscle, he can coerce a low-key Jew to let him…
Bonded together by a fervid hatred of fascism, The French Resistance comprised approximately half a million people, all of whom were willing to sacrifice their lives in order to liberate their compatriots from the abominable Vichy regime which sought paramountcy in France.
It's telling that at the beginning of Louis Malle's superb ' Lacombe, Lucien,' Radio-Vichy is playing in the background, as a teenage boy ( Pierre Blaise) ignores the jingoistic broadcast emanating from the wireless - instead paying heed to an unsuspecting bird which in a despicable cold blooded act he shoots dead.
Primal urges take precedence over steadfast ethicality. Subsequently, Lucien doesn't try and join ' The Army of Shadows' because he especially cares about the cause, he's…
The first half is just as compelling a narrative of youth as Murmur of the Heart, but as the loss of innocence becomes apparent, so does the loss of momentum for the film. Lacombe, Lucien is a film I appreciate more than love, but that appreciation is far deeper than most films, a movie that paints a portrait of troubled French youth actually going against the resistance and joining the seemingly evil inhumane Nazi regime. Louis Malle’s films are complex, it’s never black and white with his characters, Lucien is a brute that gradually loses his soul but it’s not different than any confused teenager, it comes down to the spoils of war that ultimately divides people and ruins lives.…
Louis Malle’s Lacombe, Lucien, could have been called The Fascism Within, to play on the English title of his earlier Le Feu Follet. It tells an absorbing tale of a young man, 18 year old Lucien, who lives in a bucolic village in south west France in 1944 during German occupation. He’s a brooding lad, somewhat dead-eyed, fond of killing animals (be warned), and with his father in jail, he is keen to test his limits. He tries to join the underground resistance, but he lacks political motivation and they won’t have him. He is uneducated, apolitical and amoral, and after he is caught gazing idly on a raucous party being held by the French Gestapo, he just as idly…
Louie Malle is quickly becoming one of my go-to directors simply for the fact that his films so far have been incessantly watchable.
Even this one, where you have to watch a dumb, violent, basically mute teenage protagonist wave guns around at people for 2 hours, is brilliantly executed. Lacombe, Lucien is so effortlessly humanistic; concerning itself with conversation (sometimes lack thereof) and bursts of physicality that its easy for one to overlook the intimate and deliberate photography that mimics a Tarkovsky-like efficiency.
The story of Lucien being recruited by a group of French Gustapo during the occupation also makes for a fine double (or triple if you include Enfants) bill with Murmur of the Heart as prime French coming…
This probably didn't endear Malle to those who aren't able to get beneath the surface of a film. Weren't all Frenchmen loyal to the resistance? Certainly many were, but Lucien is a teenager, and one with no compass to detect the difference between right and wrong. In fact, he has no real personality worth mentioning; he's a blank slate, but anything written on it seems to be done with invisible ink. He's hardly loyal to the Gestapo, it just creates a sort of de facto personality in him.
But Lucien is not alone, because Mr. Horn's daughter, France, would certainly not seem a likely candidate for romance with a collaborator. First, she's Jewish, and second, he's a country bumpkin and…
At one point the character Albert Horn, a tailor that finds himself stuck in the middle of the power trips of Lucien, exclaims "It's funny... I can't manage to hate you completely." And that is the perfect encapsulation of the film. Lucien is a detestable character. Right from the get go there is a great deal of hatred and cruelty within him. This is a joy to him when he kills an animal and he is entirely combative with other people, especially when they appear to be in his way. He is a prickly person, and one it is hard to like. But the point of no return is when he joins the Gestapo. Worse yet he does it without…
using german connections to force a jewish girl to go out with him...u hate to see it...but good movie about the french youth without much conviction, in this case a boy who rats out his teacher after being rejected from the resistance
Wow. I forgot how amazing the first act of this movie is- And the perfect pre-credit mini intro. DAMN. Masterful balance of just-enough-aesthetic and non-fiction; the shots aren't too showy, but still pleasing to the eye- and never too pretty. Great main character too. Not as hammy as some of Malle's other films from this period. Definitely his best WW2 themed film. Brilliant use of title cards at the end.
And very, very easy to watch.
