Review of Lacombe, Lucien (1974) by Art S — 26 Sep 2014

Louis Malle has set himself a particularly difficult challenge here: to compose a character study of an inarticulate man-child. But he has a purpose, for Lucien Lacombe is meant to represent the kind of French adolescent who might have been drawn to collaborate with the Nazis during the Occupation.

He's not mature yet and vaguely frustrated with his lot (working at a nursing home in a small rural community) - he might be willing to join the Resistance but is turned down for being too young and unfocused.

So, he is easily seduced by the power and decadence of the collaborators. As others have suggested, Malle (like Marcel Ophuls in The Sorrow and the Pity) has aimed to portray the "banality of evil" as produced by average individuals who, under other circumstances, probably wouldn't have acted this way.

That is an open question for sure but the combination of person (Lacombe, Lucien) and situation (Vichy, France) may ignite to produce horrors. When Lucien becomes attracted to a young Jewish girl, the Gestapo power he possesses allows him to act willfully and to initiate actions that have terrible consequences; we just aren't sure whether he fully understands what he's doing.

If this is really how evil materializes, we will all need to be on our guard.