Luis Malle

171 Pages·2004·8.335 MB·English

by  Hugo Frey

FRENCH FILM DIRECTORS
Louis Malle
HUGO FREY
Manchester University Press
MANCHESTER AND NEW YORK
distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave
Copyright © Hugo Frey 2004
The right of Hugo Frey to be identified as the author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Published by Manchester University Press
Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9NR, UK
and Room 400,175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY IOOIO, USA
www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk
Distributed exclusively in the USA by
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Distributed exclusively in Canada by
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for
ISBN o 7190 6456 2 hardback
o 7190 6457 o paperback
First published 2004
13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 10 9 8 7 6 $ 4 3 2 1
Typeset in Scala with Meta display
by Koinonia, Manchester
Printed in Great Britain
by Biddies Ltd, King's Lynn
Contents
LIST OF PLATES page vi
SERIES EDITORS' FOREWORD vii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ix
i In the eye of the storm 1
2 Aesthetic vision 38
3 Active pessimism and the politics of the 1950s 64
4 Malle's histories ~ 90
5 Primal scenes
115
6 Conclusion 142
FILMOGRAPHY 145
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 152
INDEX 156
List of plates
i Ascenseur pour Vechafaud (1957) page 30
2 Le Feufollet (1963) 3i
3 Le Feufollet (1963) 3i
4 Le Voleur (1967) 32
5 Le Voleur (1967) 33
6 L'Indefantdme (1968) 33
7 Lacombe Lucien (1974) 34
8 Lacombe Lucien (1974) 35
9 Pretty Baby (1978) 35
10 Atlantic City USA (1980) 36
11 My Dinner with Andre (1981) 36
12 Au revoir Jes enfants (1987) 37
Photographs courtesy of the BFI Stills Collection (London) .By permission
from Nouvelles Editions de Films (Paris). If any proper acknowledgement
has not been made, copyright-holders are invited to contact the publisher.
Series editors' foreword
To an anglophone audience, the combination of the words 'French* and
'cinema' evokes a particular kind of film: elegant and wordy, sexy but
serious - an image as dependent on national stereotypes as is that of the
crudely commercial Hollywood blockbuster, which is not to say that either
image is without foundation. Over the past two decades, this generalised
sense of a significant relationship between French identity and film has
been explored in scholarly books and articles, and has entered the
curriculum at university level and, in Britain, at A level. The study of film
as an art-form and (to a lesser extent) as industry, has become a popular
and widespread element of French Studies, and French cinema has
acquired an important place within Film Studies. Meanwhile, the growth
in multi-screen and 'art-house* cinemas, together with the development of
the video industry, has led to the greater availability of foreign-language
films to an English-speaking audience. Responding to these developments,
this series is designed for students and teachers seeking information and
accessible but rigorous critical study of French cinema, and for the
enthusiastic filmgoer who wants to know more.
The adoption of a director-based approach raises questions about
auteurism. A series that categorises films not according to period or to
genre (for example), but to the person who directed them, runs the risk of
espousing a romantic view of film as the product of solitary inspiration. On
this model, the critic's role might seem to be that of discovering contin
uities, revealing a necessarily coherent set of themes and motifs which
correspond to the particular genius of the individual. This is not our aim:
the auteur perspective on film, itself most clearly articulated in France in the
early 1950s, will be interrogated in certain volumes of the series, and,
throughout, the director will be treated as one highly significant element
in a complex process of film production and reception which includes
socio-economic and political determinants, the work of a large and highly
Viii SERIES EDITORS* FOREWORD
skilled team of artists and technicians, the mechanisms of production and
distribution, and the complex and multiply determined responses of
spectators.
The work of some of the directors in the series is already known
outside France, that of others is less so - the aim is both to provide
informative and original English-language studies of established figures,
and to extend the range of French directors known to anglophone
students of cinema. We intend the senes to contribute to the promotion of
the informal and formal study of French films, and to the pleasure of
those who watch them.
DIANA HOLMES
ROBERTINGRAM
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the following: series editors Diana Holmes and
Robert Ingram for their support and intellectual guidance; Kate E. Fox at
Manchester University Press for her friendly and professional editorial
assistance; Marie-Christine Breton of Nouvelles Editions de Films (NEF)
for her interest in, and help with, my work; the staff of the British Film
Institute, the French Institute, London, and the British Library; and
Annabel Hobley, of the BBC, for kindly locating the documentary: Arena:
My Dinner with Louis (1984). University College Chichester were most
considerate in financing some of the research expenses associated with
the preparation of this study.
The writing of this book was also strengthened by many other friends
and colleagues. Pilar Munoz, Christopher Flood and Richard Golsan en
couraged me from the outset and later provided some helpful documen
tation. In addition, Stefan Moriame kindly contributed with assistance
with translation and moral support. Special thanks goes to Benjamin Noys
and Barbara Rassi. Benjamin Noys has been an invaluable intellectual
companion in my work. One way or another many of his ideas have found
their way into this book. Barbara Rassi has frequently helped deepen my
thinking on Malle. Her thoughtful perspective on his films was welcome
throughout. Indeed, her contribution goes far beyond the world of Louis
Malle. Faults will no doubt remain; they are the responsibility of the
author. The book is for Alfreda, Joy, Egon and Barbara.
HUGO FREY
March 2004

1
In the eye of the storm
In this book I will introduce readers to the cinema of Louis Malle
(1932-95). Malle needs little further preliminary discussion here. His
is a body of work that most film critics around the world recognise as
being one of the most productive in post-war international cinema,
including as it does triumphs such as Ascenseurpour V6chafaud (1957);
Le Feufolkt (1963); Lacombe Lucien (1974); Atlantic City USA (1980)
and Au revoir les enfants (1987) (Williams 1992:343; French 1996:36;
LaSalle 1995: 3; Aud£ 1996: 54-6). As Derek Malcolm underlined
shortly after Malle's untimely death: 'his legacy now seems extra
ordinarily rich - more than thirty films, a half a dozen of them classics'
(1995:32). Moreover, Malle is one of the few directors to have moved
effortlessly from French independent production to an extended
period of work in the United States. A professional triumph that is
only matched by his versatile exchanges from fiction to documentary
film, and vice versa. Malle's important contributions to that less
glamorous field of media production contain, among others, the
extensive television mini-series devoted to contemporary India, L'Inde
fantdme (1968), as well as documentary feature films devoted to
France and the United States.
Malle's work attracted intense public controversy, with a new
Malle film being just as likely to find itself debated on the front page
of Le Monde or Liberation as reviewed in the film section of those
newspapers. Viewed in historical retrospect, Malle is a director who
was consistently in the eye of the storm. In this opening chapter I
highlight four turbulent periods that mark out the career: the New
Wave; May '68; the 1970s; and finally Malle's experience of film-
2 LOUIS MALLE
making in the USA and his return to work on selected projects in
France (1978-95). The historical and cultural analysis I pursue will
position Malle in relation to the dominant social and cultural forces of
his times in the two countries in which he worked. It also allows me to
draw out several of the important areas of further investigation that
form the subjects of subsequent chapters. Already in the course of
this overview, tensions, paradoxes and contradictions are in evidence
in Malle's career. The words 'Louis Malle' and 'ambiguity' will be
frequendy brought together in the pages of this book. Ambiguity is a
key feature of Mallean cinema that one can first identify, at the very
beginning of his career, in his unique relationship with the New
Wave.
The NewWave: 'within and without9
Louis Malle's early career falls on the borderline between the innova
tions of the New Wave and a less precisely defined renewal of post
war French cinema. Work such as his debut feature Ascenseur pour
I'echafaud anticipated the films of Claude Chabrol, Francois Truffaut,
Jean-Luc Godard and others. Conversely, Malle did not always corres
pond to the popular aesthetic codes of the mature New Wave. By the
beginning of the 1960s, Malle was increasingly antagonistic towards
his contemporaries, taking up hostile public positions against the very
idea of the New Wave, long before that stance itself became a
fashionable pose. In hindsight, each of the discrepancies that exist
between Malle and his New Wave contemporaries are exemplary of a
director who is frequently difficult to classify. It is for this reason
unproductive to try to resolve Malle's ambiguous relationship with his
peers. Instead, it is more profitable to dissect how his work
simultaneously falls 'within and without' of the New Wave. For it is
here, in this paradoxical space, that Louis Malle's engagement with
cinema flourished.
In the autumn of 1957 the journalist Francoise Giroud used the
phrase nouvelk vague, or New Wave, to describe the emergence of a
younger generation of professionals in French society. After the
term's appearance in the original article for L'Express magazine, it
soon became a catch-all label to define those young film-makers who
were offering their debut features. Within the space of just a few