Here's another film that David Chase suggested in his Adventures in Moviegoing section on the Criterion Channel: Louis Malle's 1974 film Lacombe, Lucien. I go back and forth on Malle film, I think it relates to his pacing, and all directors have their own internal clock, and his is always just a tad off with me. However, I also almost universally really like his films (Elevator to the Gallows, Au revoir les enfants, Atlantic City). Lacombe, Lucien was a controversial film when it came out because it addressed the complexity of the French response to German occupation during World War II, that is, while it is easy for the French to romanticize that all Frenchmen fought in the Resistance, there were other French citizens who, for innumerable reasons, supported, even quietly, the Nazis. Pierre Blaise plays Lucien, who initially wanted to join the Resistance, but then, almost immediately, began to side with the Germans. We're never told exactly why Lucien makes this decision, several reasons are hinted out, and I think that's what Malle meant to tell us - it's not that simple. Blaise was a complete amateur, who Malle chose after a lengthy search, and I think this was part of Malle's goal of keeping Lucien's (and many Frenchmen) motives obscure. Blaise was only in three more films, all short within a year, before dying in a drunken car crash at the age of twenty. The actress who played Lucien Jewish lover France Horn, Aurore Clement, looked awfully familiar, and I figured out that I had seen her in Wem Wenders's Paris, Texas - and also in the colonial French scene in the expanded director's cut of Apocalypse Now (Coppola had left it on the cutting room floor in the initial theatrical release, which is a pity because it may be the best scene). Definitely recommended.
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