War has its good sides, too.
Ever since I saw Au revoir les enfants last fall, I've meaning to double back for the other titles in Criterion's "3 Films by Louis Malle" box set. This week, Criterion did me a good turn by including 1974's Lacombe, Lucien as part of its festival of World War II films on Hulu. Co-written, co-produced and directed by Malle, the film is set in the southwest corner of France in the waning months of the war and is centered on a naïve farm boy (Pierre Blaise) who is turned down flat when he expresses an interest in joining the Resistance and winds up going over to the other side for want of anything better to do. (It certainly beats returning to the nursing home.) He already has a killer's instinct (one of the very first things we see him do is use a slingshot to bean a songbird) and is handy with a gun (a skill he shows off while rabbit-hunting), so it's not too surprising how readily he takes to working for the Gestapo and being able to get his way by whipping out his pistol.
This aspect of the job comes to the fore when Blaise is taken to a Jewish tailor in hiding (Holger Löwenadler) to get fitted for a suit and he becomes enamored of the man's daughter (Aurore Clément), who pointedly resists his advances. At least she's capable of being cordial, which is more than can be said for her grandmother (Thérèse Giehse), who's too old and frail to play nice with a collaborator. Even when the war clearly starts going against them, Blaise continues working for the Germans, because what alternative does he have? At least he manages to escape to the country (with Clément and Giehse in tow), giving him one last reprieve in idyllic surroundings (and a chance to put his poaching skills to use once again) before meeting his ultimate fate.