3 Films by Louis Malle: Murmur of the Heart; Lacombe, Lucien; Au revoir les enfants

The Criterion Collection, 1971-87. DVD Movie. Fine copy/fine. DVD movies. 4 discs, each with a booklet, in a slip-case. The set includes three classic films, plus a documentary about Malle and the complete Charlie Chaplin film which is partially shown in Au revoir les enfants. The films are in French with optional English subtitles and have the widescreen format. Le souffle au coeur: 1971, 118 minutes, starring Benoît Ferreux, Leá Massari, Daniel Gélin. Lacombe, Lucien: 1974, 138 minutes, starring Pierre Blaise, Aurore Clément, Holger Löwenadler. Au revoir les enfants: 1987, 101 minutes, starring Gaspard Manesse, Raphaël Fejtö. The three films are superb and much could be said about each of them. Lacombe, Lucien is set in a small town in the southwest of France in 1944. Lucien is a farm boy who by accident comes to work for the collaborationist police which gives him status and considerable power. He is taken to a Jewish tailor, who is in hiding with his elderly mother and young daughter, to have a suit made. But he falls in love with the daughter with consequences that are just a unpredictable as his initial recruitment into la police allemand. What is interesting about Lucien is that he might just as well have joined the Résistance, as indeed he tried to do. The ambiguity of this situation for the French in the early 1970s was one that they eventually came to realize. The Occupation was a bitter memory, and it took the passage of decades for them to understand it.