Tockinit not horrible nor great

SeeQuant Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

Sammy-Jo Cervantes There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Yazmin Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

secondtake Lacombe, Lucien (1974)A disturbing and sad movie about surviving the Nazi occupation in France. It's unlike any other film of its type, turning from tender to ruthless in a breath, and from joyous to ghastly just as fast. And though the Nazis are behind the violence and fear, they play a mostly indirect role in the cornering of a small Jewish family in the countryside. This is a tale about French and French, about the Resistance against collaborators.And it's told from the point of view of the collaborators, a gang of opportunistic thugs who have taken over an old hotel and who terrorize, with German supplied documents, ordinary citizens. The title character is Lucien, an utterly heartless but somehow, at times, sympathetic boy who gets pulled into the lure of these thugs. But he shows a scary detachment from all feeling, even from love at first, and certainly from respect for life. There is a hint that he grew to think human life was cheap from his days hunting and killing animals without a flinch as a youth, but it could be the movie is showing that he had almost a disorder, something that made him unfeeling even for the most ordinary, harmless, vulnerable things. I think the former is more accurate, though, because his hunting rabbits and killing a chicken with his hands were probably (and still are) part of country life where rabbit and chicken were part of the cuisine.But it's people who will eventually be his target, and he is not like his older counterparts. He doesn't want the spoils of war, not money or finery, resisting at first even the suit the Jewish tailor is ordered to make for him. It is here the movie gets to what matters. Lucien is ignorant enough to not quite see why this Jewish man is any different than other men, but he catches on when others around him make clear the Jew is only alive and in hiding as their choice. I guess they need a good tailor, and they need the man's money (the tailor pays when he makes the suits, it seems). The complication of a beautiful (and very French looking) daughter takes some of the expected turns, but not completely, because this very young man doesn't really know how to behave, or how to fall in love.The director, Louis Malle, is a legend of French cinema, and later even of American cinema. He depends on location shooting, natural light, and naturalistic acting to give every scene a believability that is both beautiful and at times uncanny, especially combined with violence to animals. The lead actor, Pierre Blase, is almost too convincing in his cool and relatively mindless determination. The tailor, played by Holger Löwenadler, a Swedish actor, is a model of patience and continual assessment, trying to play the game with the thugs for his survival. His daughter is less fully realized, with Aurore Clement playing this charming and innocent girl withheld from normal life by the war. But she does in fact learn to love Lucien in her own way, and he responds in his own way.Needless to say, the end is tragic and rather perfect. And the whole troubling two hours getting there will leave you moved, for sure, but also enlightened. The problem of loyalty and survival takes on new light here.

Ilpo Hirvonen Louis Malle earned three Oscar nominations during his career and Lacombe Lucien was a nominee for the Best Foreign Language film. But somehow Malle and his films have remained quite unknown. The destruction of innocence and the influence of war on youth were common themes for him; alongside with Goodbye, Children (1983), Lacombe Lucien is to my mind one of his finest films and one of the finest anti-war films made; but there's much more to it than just that.In 1944 during WWII an 18-year-old Lucien Lacombe wishes to join the resistance in France. After getting turned down he starts working for the German police. He enjoys his small does of power and authority but things start to get complicated when he gets infatuated by a girl, who is a daughter of a Jewish tailor. After a series of misfortunes Lucien tries to save the girl by escaping to the countryside. When Americans come to France they sentence Lucien to death for working for the Nazis.Louis Malle often tested the audiences he pushed the limitations of cinematic expression. The Lovers (1958) was a description of a woman bored with her bourgeois life and it quite courageously showed sexuality on screen, which got the film banned in many countries and for instance; an American distributor called it pornography and denied to distribute it. Murmur of the Heart (1971) was a bold film about sexual awakening which portrayed an incest relationship between a mother and her teenage son. Lacombe Lucien was also a brave film with regards to WWII and Nazis, who are often seen as soulless monsters in films. Discussing about the controversy of the trial of Nurnberg was quite a taboo in 1970's - and still is; Nazis committed a crime against humanity, but the Allies weren't saints either but Germans remained the only ones culpable. It's quite hard to have sympathy for Nazis and Louis Malle doesn't ask for it, but what he does is show the flip side of the truth: portraying a youngster who doesn't know on whose side he actually is and in the end gets sentenced to death.The film is also a film of strong contrasts: it starts with a sequence in the countryside, beautiful landscapes and sounds of locusts - a place where Lucien is at his most juvenile. Then we're thrown to the city, narrow alleys and gray buildings where Lucien works for the German police and tries hardly to be at his most mature. The countryside represents peace, adolescence and innocence on the contrary the city represents war and adulthood. In the countryside the violence is towards animals and in the city it is towards Jews. In the end when we are taken back to the countryside the viewer is given the last clue about Lucien's naivety and ignorance when he plays around with the girl.Lacombe Lucien is also a portrayal of the destruction of innocence and how war influences youth; people who are still searching themselves and have no idea about life - they're easy to exploit. It's a film about the evil in us all, it's a growth story. The severe aesthetics and the subtle narrative worked very well and Louis Malle's decision of giving sympathy for Lucien in the end fascinated film. A brilliant film against war, everything that takes innocence away from the youth, a story about the influence war has on us and how power and naivety should never be mixed.

Dr_Lector Louis Malle's 'Lacombe Lucien' is chiefly a character study.The title character Lucien is a troubled and confused young man in a troubled and confused time. Instead of a heroic character with conviction Malle presents us with the traitor, the Nazi collaborator. At the film's onset Lucien attempts to join the French resistance, and is rejected. Perhaps because of his wounded pride, or thirst for action he then joins the German police and turns in the resistance leader who refused him. Malle gives us this dark young man and seems to ask the question, is he human? Lucien is uneducated, uncultured, unsure, and unimportant. He does not have wit, style, or charm. Although he is a collaborator he does not seem to share the conviction of the Germans, rather his collaboration comes out of a desire for some measure of power and importance. He seems to always chose the wrong thing, and yet as one character puts it "It's strange, I can't bring myself to completely despise you". But Malle's portrait is not a sympathetic one. The viewer will hardly feel sorry, or aligned with Lucien. Despite all this he remains human. Even though he seems to move through life in a somewhat robotic and detached fashion we are left with small glimpses of his humanity. He falls for a young Jewish girl, yet his affair with her is possessive and controlling.His fate, as revealed at the film's conclusion, is not surprising or undeserved, but in a way it is still tragic. It is tragic because Lucien was a young man who perhaps lacked the knowledge and conviction to do the right thing. Lucien is certainly what he has been made by his self and his own decisions, but he is also a product of the times. When Lucien finally does make the right choice we begin to see a laughing and more carefree and human side of him. His story is tragic because by the time he chooses to do the right thing it is too late.Apart from Malle's distinctive style this film is quite different from his other coming of age tales, because Lucien seems to lack the kind of youthful joy which Malle captures so well. This is the film's only drawback: it is not pleasant, it is not fun. Lucien is not all that relatable. But this is because the times were not pleasant, not fun, and not relatable.Of course anyone who is watching one of Louis Malle film's goes in looking for art, but so often his art is fun and enjoyable. This is not one of those films; it is dark and serious. But, even though the portrait Malle paints is dark, it is human and it is vivid.

whpratt1 This was a great film about a young man, Pierre Blaise,(Lucien Lacombe) who was raised on a farm in France and loved to kill animals, even birds singing in a tree. Lucien loved to catch chickens and kill without the blink of a eye and did the same thing with rabbits. That is basically how this film started out and it also took on many different directions. Lucien gets involved with the German's as they occupied France during WW II and joins the Nazi's as an informer and becomes deeply involved with a Jewish family. France Horn, (Aurore Clement) is a Jewish girl who Lucien falls in love with and her father is Albert Horn who is a tailor by trade and he does not like Lucien because he knows he is a turn coat for the German's who hate the Jews. This is a very interesting and mysterious film and has some very deep secrets that occurred during World War II.