Lacombe, Lucien

Lacombe, Lucien
Luis Malle, 1974, 137 minutes
Buy Lacombe Lucien at Amazon

Set at the end of WWII in France, Lacombe Lucien follows the coming of age of Lucien Lacombe. Lacombe is tired of his cleaning work at a hospital. On a trip home, he finds his father a captive in a war prison and his mother's new lover pushing him out. Lacombe wants somewhere other than the hospital to call home. First, he attempts to enlist in the French resistance. Rebuffed because he is too young, Lacombe then heads back to work and accidentally falls in with the Nazis.

Lacombe comes of age as a Nazi who befriends the Horns, a Jewish family hiding in the small town where Lacombe works, with an alarming naivite about the struggle between the Nazis and the Jews. The film follows his transformation from a brazen, boorish thug to a young man falling in love and tragically learning the calamitous error of his ways.

In the end, as the Allies close in, Lacombe tries to escape with the Horn daughter, France Horn. They end up in a kind of Garden of Eden where they live in nature and avoid society's conflicts. While Lacombe's hunting at the beginning of the film seems boyishly sadistic and he uses his prey inappropriately to curry favor, by the end of the film he seems more in sync with nature when he kills his prey to provide for his new family. At last, Lacombe has found the home where he fits in.

Lacombe Lucien is slow paced, but Luis Malle creates many memorably uncomfortable moments to keep it captivating. When Lacombe brings a case of champagne to the Horn's house as a gift, he doesn't just give the gift, but forces everyone to join him in drinking the entire case as he embarrassingly tries to charm France. Later, when his mother shows up at the Horn house to warn Lacombe that he is a marked man, Mr. Horn and Mrs. Lacombe have an extremely awkward and laconic parental conversation about Lacombe.

On a sad note, Pierre Blaise, who gives a wide ranging performance as Lacombe, died the year after the film was released.








BBC Notes
NY Times Notes