Lacombe Lucien [1974] | ![Lacombe Lucien [1974]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41H9GWHC2DL._SL500_.jpg)
| Director: Louis Malle
Actors: Pierre Blaise, Aurore Clément, Holger Löwenadler, Therese Giehse, Stéphane Bouy
Studio: Arrow Films
Category: Video
Rating:  6 reviews
Sales Rank: 11118
Format: Pal
Languages: English (Original Language), French (Original Language), German (Original Language)
Rating: Suitable for 12 years and over
Media: VHS Tape
Discs: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 132 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.3 x 4.2 x 1.1
EAN: 5027035001494
ASIN: B00004SPHP
Theatrical Release Date: September 29, 1974
Release Date: June 5, 2000
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| Customer Reviews: Read 1 more reviews...
 How can you think this? February 22, 2008
Ms. Rachel A. Hill (UK)
0 out of 4 found this review helpful
I had to watch this film for my 1st year History course at University to see whether films can acurately represent the past. Even though this film is very accurate it is also RUBBISH! I have never been so bored in my life and couldnt wait to get out of the lecture theatre. I wasn't the only one by far. My essay on this module is due in 5 weeks time and I'm dreading the fact that I may need to actually watch this again.
 Evil at its most banal and inadequate July 19, 2006
Trevor Willsmer (London, England)
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
Louis Malle's Lacombe, Lucien still impresses, although it does tend to amble in the third act just when you might expect it to tighten its grip. But it's still a casually powerful reminder of the less heroic side of France under Vichy rule (the Nazis are barely seen in the film) as its none too bright farmboy just drifts almost accidentally into collaboration with the German Police made up entirely of his compatriots after being turned down for the Resistance. The film's major achievement is in showing, much like fascism in general, the appeal that collaboration had to the disaffected and the underachieving outsiders in the community (only one of the `police' is a real zealot) and the attraction of undeserved and unearned power as Lucien finds the power he has over people (particularly the unspoken threat of handing his Jewish `girlfriend' - perhaps a little over symbolically called `France' - to the Germans) is far more intoxicating than killing mere animals.
Throughout, as with Melville's resistance masterpiece L'Armee des Ombres, there's a mundane sense of reality that heightens the drama. Set in the kind of small picturesque village that outsiders find idyllic but which is a tedious hell to live in for the locals, it shows how malaise and opportunity is far more of a driving force than malice. Certainly it's far from glamorous, its collaborators hanging round in a local hotel getting drunk and bemoaning their lot as the war news gets continually worse (as one points out, you have to listen to both the German and the British radio reports "and split the difference" to find the truth) and they gradually get picked off by the emboldened locals.
Lacombe Lucien January 29, 2004
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
One of Louis Malle's best films, "Lacombe Lucien" caused a stir when it was first released in France in 1974. With his film, Malle asked the French uncomfortable questions about the nature of Occupation and, specifically, collaborators. Lucien is a rough-and-ready peasant from the south-west, with little awareness of the war and its issues, who essentially becomes a collaborator by accident, after being rejected by the local Maquis man, his old teacher. He mixes with a disparate set of Miliciens who take him under their wing and through whom he meets a Jewish family. The love affair that ensues between Lucien and France Horn, daughter of the Jewish tailor, Albert, has its moments of awkwardness and improbability but is also, ultimately, very moving. Lucien can be objectionable and vulgar but the young actor Pierre Blaise - tragically killed shortly after the making of the film - invests the role with an engaging mixture of youthful bravado and sensitivity. If you've only seen Malle's "Au revoir les enfants", try this for a different perspective on the War.
Absolutely absorbing September 30, 2002
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
I was absolutely engrossed when I watched this film. I thought that the characters were very well portrayed and that the film showed how easy it was for an ordinary person to be sucked in to doing an amoral job. I found the love story to be both sympathetic and credible and thought that the actor who played Lucien Lacombe was excellent.
Brilliant, chilling, heartbreaking July 5, 2001
Sophie Masson (Armidale, New South Wales Australia)
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
Way beyond the romanticism and the cant about the Occupation, this is the real thing--a brilliant, heartbreaking and chilling film about how an ordinary person can become caught up in terrible events, and display horrendous qualities. Never simplistic, this is a film that not only tells us about the 1940's, but about now. if you can't understand the Balkans civil wars, for example, Lacombe Lucien may help to illuminate some dark corners indeed. This is a film about PEOPLe, not ideology. It is one of the best films ever made about civil war.
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