1. Introduction to Louis Malle
Louis Malle (1932-1995) was one of the most important directors of the French New Wave, and although he is rarely considered a "typical" New Wave director, his work remains innovative. Whether in terms of filming techniques or subject matter, Malle has maintained and attempted to incorporate them, and has developed a certain personal artistic style as a result of this exploration.
Louis Malle was born in October 1932 to a middle-class family in a small town in northern France. With the outbreak of World War II and the social upheaval, he followed his parents around the world, causing him to change schools frequently and remain virtually unchanged from one school to another. Malle's rebellious spirit began to grow as a child: he loathed and criticized the bourgeois family in which he grew up, so his childhood was often characterized by loneliness, which led to his love and obsession with cinema, and at the age of nineteen, despite his parents' obstacles, he enrolled in the Institut des Hautes Études des Hautes Études Cinématographiques (IDHEC) to study cinema.
In 1975, Mahler went to the United States, and moved to Hollywood. From 1978 to 1987, Mahler continued to update his film concepts and techniques in the U.S., bringing the fusion of genre and authorial cinema to its fullest extent. 1987, Mahler returned to his homeland, France, and made works such as Au Revoir les Enfants and Lacombelucien, which demonstrated his reflection on history and his profound thoughts on human nature. The film shows his reflection on history and his profound thoughts on human nature.
2. Filmmaking Style：
In his more than forty years of creative life, Louis Malle has made a wide range of films in different styles. It seems that Malle has always maintained a student's mentality towards cinema, constantly experimenting and exploring, even touching on certain extreme styles. Someone once asked Mahler: "You've made so many different kinds of movies, what do they all have in common? Mahler replied: "Me". Although Mahler's answer is playful, it is indeed the most accurate one. He said that he "tries to treat each movie as an adventure, and tries to be as different as possible from the last one, no matter in terms of subject matter or filming method", and that his most important characteristic is to explore more possibilities without limiting himself, thus making his films "undefinable" and "impossible to be defined". "He is an "author" who cannot be defined.
-Autobiographical movie of writing oneself
-Comedy and tragedy with strong personal style
-Color expression that follows the theme
3. Focus on Character-driven Stories:
In Louis Malle's films, the "child" is a symbol that cannot be ignored, and he has made a number of works with children and young people as the main protagonists. These films focus on children in different styles, and the meanings they try to reveal are also different, and he records these children in a humanitarian mood, and even achieves a psychoanalytic effect through the camera. In these films, Mahler truly records these children in a humanitarian spirit, even to the point of psychoanalyzing them through the camera. In these films, Mahler celebrates the innocence and loveliness of children with true feelings, but also exposes the influence of children growing up in the adult world, and deeply criticizes the corruption of the adult world.
In Lacombe Lucien, Mahler not only shows concern for wartime history, but also humanitarian compassion for the figure of Lacombe Lucien. This movie is very interesting in its presentation of "sex", as the director explores the dialectical relationship between power and love. Lucien is given power because he became a Nazi, and this power gives him the chance to get love, and when love comes, he has to sacrifice his power for the sake of love, where power is given a kind of dominance over sexuality.
reference;
Frey, Hugo. "Louis Malle and the 1950s: Ambiguities, Friendships and Legacies." South Central Review, vol. 23, no. 2,2006, Pp.22-35， muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/article/199904/summary. Accessed 25 Mar. 2024.
"Looking for Lacombe, Lucien in Southwestern France." Proceedings of the Western Society for French History, vol. 39,2011， quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/idx/w/wsth/0642292.0039.027/--looking-for- lacombe-lucien-in-southwestern-france?rgn=main. Accessed 25 Mar. 2024.
Pautrot, Jean-Louis. “Music and Memory in Film and Fiction: Listening to Nuit et Brouillard （1955）， Lacombe Lucien （1973） and La Ronde de Nuit （1969）." Dalhousie French Studies, vol. 55, 2001,Pp. 168-182， www.jstor.org/stable/40838304. Accessed 25 Mar. 2024.
Yakir, Dan, and Louis Malle. "Louis Malle: An Interview from "the Lovers to Pretty Baboy." Film Quarterly. vol. 31.no. 4, July 1978. Pp.2-10， https://doi.org/10.2307/1211802.
