It is a performances centric movie

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

During the WWII, a French countryside boy, Lucien Lacombe, insouciantly gets involved and recruited by the local Gestapo, after procuring the fast-gained high-handed social position and war trophies, his life has descended into a limbo when he is enamored with a Jewish girl. Louis Malle's Oscar-nominated WII feature clings on a well-balanced pace, concocts a carefully-conducted ideological wartime mind state from assorted kinds, mainly zooming in on the conflicting counterpoise between French-born Gestapos (there are scarcely any German has been mentioned in the film) and the fretful Jews in French. Also the resistance power as the third party has never been really put a sizable weight in the narrative line (not as in Jean-Pierre Melville's ARMY OF SHADOWS, 1969, 9/10). The metaphor of the overpowering horror at then is constantly and insistently being dispersed by a motley slaying of various animals, killing birds, dead horse, hunting rabbits, catching a domestic hen and snapping its neck, even a dying dalmatian in the ominously poised supporting-characters-go-to-hell slaughter. All the shots emit a kind of unsettling cinematic impact on the viewers (animal lovers particularly), the message has been unmistakably transmitted, but still not recommendable. First-timer and amateurish leading actor Pierre Blaise (who would unfortunately die in a car accident one year later) bears a tremendous balance of ennui and restlessness, an archetype of the rebellion youth, without any stage-fright to give away his newbie tag, his taciturn image can last for ever. Another great performance is from Holger Löwenadler, the Jewish father-in-law figure for Lucien, whose dignified integrity has to miserably yield to a adrenalin-driven adolescent's advance on his daughter, an exemplified cautionary tale of the misappropriation of weaponry and power. The daughter, Lucien's love interest, played by Aurore Clément, is a more opportunist symbol, oscillating between subservient lover and vengeful daughter. Among a handful of supporting roles, most of which are abruptly dissipating in the second half when the love-pursuit dominates the film, it could have been a potpourri of bountiful individual explorations, but Malle didn't opt for that way. The bleak shots of the ghost town after curfew is an indelible testimony of the dreadful terror of the life during wartime, Malle's film outlandishly culminates in a 15 minutes bucolic spree with Lucien, the daughter and her grandmother (an almost wordless Therese Giehse, but exudes great force of hatred even for a dazed glance), living in his countryside house (bombed and deserted now), rendering the film its most telling salve to the young lost souls, one may get a belated palpitation towards our young protagonist out of detachment which for me is the pre-eminent sense through its 138 minutes running time.

One of the top 3 films of Louis Malle, Lacombe Lucien, named in bureaucratic fashion is a film of many layers. Perfectly cast and done with precision and minuscule eye for the period detail, this picture is like all of Malle's best work, an aesthetic picture novel. Malle did his best in casting Pierre Blaise as a main character, showing with an emotionless face the deepness of the void in his soul. Sadistic and cruel, murdering small animals and decapitating chicken with ease, Lucien is a text book example of the deviant character without any moral scruples, left out of his mother's emotional care and show of love. He wanders in a moral wasteland of his life and ends up just where he is supposed to be, a French Gestapo unit, Lucien joins not only in a wrong place, but at the wrongest of times to be serving the German Nazi regime (June 1944). It's a motley crew full of shady characters, racists, bigots, one of which is even black and politest of them all, former actresses in insignificant films, and a dog, all of them some sort of has-beens trying to do harm to the world they're also left out of.Lucien knows no love, no compassion, no human emotion, and it shows perfectly on his face, not until he meats a Jewish girl, called France (of all names),the daughter of Albert the tailor who survives the madness of the war doing his job for everybody even the collaborationist that is out to get him. He is aware of his guilt and willingly pays for it. Lucien finds out about love, but in the process he also learns about human emotions and even manages in one brief moment to separate right from wrong. Too little to late, as it shows, but the point Malle wanted to make in this movie is right on the spot. Humanity is a strange beast. Fantastic.

A tragic page in the history of France is examined in this disturbing account about the rise of a young man who went to the enemy's side after being rejected to join the resistance movement. Lucien, a peasant youth with no future, is stuck as a janitor in a old folks home, which he clearly hates. At home, Lucien has to put up with the indignity of seeing his own mother who is having an affair with the landlord of the farm where they live, while the father is held prisoner by the Germans.All along, one can witness a mean streak in Lucien. We watch him pull his sling shot to kill a small bird senselessly. He is an avid hunter, as witnessed when he goes after rabbits, something that in the war torn country comes in handy. We also see him beheading a chicken at the farm. The only way to go, in his mind is by joining the traitors that are collaborating with the invading Germans.Jean-Bernard, one of the French collaborators, decides to show Lucien the ropes of his new chosen career. It is Jean-Bernard who is in Lucien's eyes a role model, who introduces him to a life style he was not used to. Taking Lucien to get a new suit, the young man meets Horn, a Parisian tailor, who happens to be a Jew. Horn is hoping Jean-Bernard will be able to smuggle with his older mother and his daughter France into neighboring Spain.Lucien becomes obsessed with France Horn, a beautiful young woman, who happens to be an accomplished pianist. Realizing he can bully Horn in doing whatever he wants, Lucien moves into their apartment, beginning an affair with France, who is repulsed as well as in awe of the power Luien exerts over herself and the family. Lucien commits the ultimate sin by turning Horn over the Germans and to a sure death, but has second thoughts when a German soldier comes for France and her grandmother.Louis Malle film, seen for a second time, still holds one's interest. The story is one of many accounts in how French citizens turned against the less fortunate French Jewish population. It is also a tale about the cruelty of a young man that enters a world where otherwise he would have never been admitted had it not been because his determination to impress his newly found friends. Lucien relished in watching the school teacher being tortured by his allies. Mr. Malle examined the life of a young man without real convictions, political, or otherwise, who became a monster that stopped at nothing to get what he wanted. The director's coup was casting a non professional, Pierre Blaise, for the pivotal role of Lucien Lacombe. Unfortunately, the young man with a future in front of him, died tragically in an automobile accident. Aurore Clement shows a luminous quality in her way for bringing her tragic character France Horn to life. Ms. Clement was at the height of her beauty, something that comes across in her work in the film. Swedish actor Holger Lowenadler plays Albert Horn with dignity. The actor was perfect as the Jewish tailor. Therese Giehse, a German actress is seen as the older Bella Horn. The supporting cast does excellent work for Mr. Malle."Lacombe, Lucien" is one of Louis Malle's best films among his distinguished career in the cinema.

Even today some thirty years after this film was released the subject of Collaboration remains sensitive in some areas of France. For someone like me, non-French, no known French or German relatives and by extension no immediate family or even friends directly affected, it verges on the impertinent to discuss this film at any but a technical level. I find it excellent in all main areas, writing, acting, direction, cinematography, hardly surprising given that it was written and directed by Louis Malle. Superficially it appears simplistic in the extreme; a young French teenager attempts to join the Resistance in 1944 and is rejected on the grounds of youth on the strength of which he becomes an active member of the 'German police'. This is not unlike, say, Englishman William Joyce, attempting to join the British Armed Forces at the outbreak of World War II, being rejected on grounds of health and therefore deciding to transpose himself into Lord Haw-Haw and broadcast German propaganda to Britain. Malle has Lucien stumble by chance into the German police and, finding the water fine, gradually immerse himself. Watching the film is like negotiating a moral minefield and I don't feel it is for me - on the grounds cited above - to comment further on this aspect. Suffice it to say I found it a fine, courageous film and will surely return to it on DVD.