Lacombe, Lucien
| Lacombe Lucien | |
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Theatrical poster
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| Directed by | Louis Malle |
| Produced by | Louis Malle Claude Nedjar |
| Screenplay by | Louis Malle Patrick Modiano |
| Starring |
Pierre Blaise Aurore Clément |
| Music by | Django Reinhardt |
| Cinematography | Tonino Delli Colli |
| Edited by | Suzanne Baron |
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Production
company |
Nouvelles Éditions de Films
Universal Pictures France |
| Distributed by |
Cinema International Corporation (France, original) 20th Century Fox (1975, worldwide) The Criterion Collection (2003 U.S DVD release) |
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Release date
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Running time
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138 minutes |
| Country | France |
| Language | French German |
| Box office | $13.1 million |
Lacombe Lucien (in English, Lacombe, Lucien) is a 1974 French war drama film about a French teenage boy during the German occupation of France in World War II.
In June 1944, as the Allies are fighting the Germans in Normandy, Lucien Lacombe, a 17-year-old country boy, tries to join the Resistance. The local Resistance leader, the village schoolteacher, turns him down on grounds of age. Arrested by chance, Lucien is taken to the local headquarters of the Carlingue, the French auxiliaries of the Gestapo. There he unwittingly denounces the teacher, who is brought in and tortured. Seeing that Lucien could be useful, the Carlingue recruit him into their lawless regime of extortion and terror.
He enjoys his new power and position, but falls in love with France Horn. She is a French-born Jewish girl living in seclusion with her father Albert, a tailor, and her paternal grandmother Bella, who are living in fear of deportation. Forcing himself upon the girl, Lucien becomes protective of the very people targeted by his superiors. Albert, giving up hope, surrenders himself to the Carlingue, who alert the Germans to the two other Jews. When a German soldier comes to arrest them, Lucien kills him and takes the women to an abandoned farm.
But he knows that he has chosen the wrong side and that his crimes will be found out. The film ends at this point and a final message on screen says that Lucien was caught, tried and executed by the Resistance.
Malle worked with novelist Patrick Modiano to write the screenplay (Modiano won the 2014 Nobel Prize for Literature). Originally, they entitled the script Le faucon ("The Falcon") and intended to set it in present-day Mexico. However, Malle was not allowed to shoot in Mexico (nor in Chile), so he rewrote the script, giving it a wartime French setting. The script was retitled Le milicien.
Vincent Canby, film critic for The New York Times, gave it a positive review. He wrote, "Lacombe, Lucien is easily Mr. Malle's most ambitious, most provocative film, and if it is not as immediately affecting as The Fire Within or even the comic Murmur of the Heart, it's because—to make his point—he has centered it on a character who must remain forever mysterious, forever beyond our sympathy."
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