A formidable director
By Abdul Ghaffar

RECENTLY, the French Embassy in Delhi held a retrospective of six feature films of Louis Malle. Five films except his third film Zazie in the Metro (1960), fall in the category of works which established his credentials as a formidable director, in the French New Wave Cinema. This film is an anarchic adaptation of Raymond Queneau’s novel about a foul-mouthed 10-year old girl who comes to visit her uncle in Paris and wrecks havoc everywhere she goes. This film is a technically exciting attempt to find visual equivalents for Queneau’s neo-Joycean puns through the use of trick shots, super impositions, variable camera speeds, jump cuts and multiple illusions.

With his third feature film Malle was celebrating his achieving international reputation with just two feature films at the young age of 26. Louis Malle (1932-1995), started as a director of documentary films co-directing Jacques-Yves cousteau’s under-water feature The Silent World (1956). Later in his career, he returned to make documentary films for television.

Malle won the Lovis Delluc Award in 1957 for his solo debut Elevator to the Gallows a suspense thriller. The Lovers (1958), his second feature film, earned him an international reputation. Both films starred his mistress Jeanne Moreau. Malle said at the time that watching movies bored him; but he enjoyed making them and the paradox is evident since he brought a fresh perspective to every thing specially in Elevator to the Gallows. Based on a novel by Noel Calef about a man who is encouraged by his mistress to murder her husband, who is also his boss. The atmosphere of sexual intensity through out the film was also characteristic of The Lovers, a lyrical film beautifully photographed by Henri Decae. This witty film is about a brief love affair between a bored socialite and a young student for whom she leaves her husband — a newspaper baron. This movie got a Special Jury Prize at Venice in 1958.

Malle continued to experiment with his narrative form in Very Private Life (1964), a semi autobiographical film revolving around the iconic figure of Brigitte Bardot. The Fire Within (1963), is regarded as Malle’s masterpiece. Malle took long to make this film. The Fire Within, is literary cinema in the tradition of Antonioni films. The film, incisive and discursive, is a visual narration, with minimum dialogues.

Malle did not subscribe to any particular genre. But he had the honour of belonging to the handful of film-makers who continued to dominate despite the fact that the French New Wave as a collective phenomenon was over by 1964. Before coming to India to film a Calcutta (1969), part of hisbrilliant six-hour documentary essay Phanton India (1970) for the French television, he made Viva Maria (1965), The Thief (1967), and William Wilson (1968). In Viva Maria, Brigitte Bardot and Jeanne Moreau in a” comic portrayal of the Latin American Revolution, while, in The Thief, Jean-Paul Belmondo is a theif who rebels against society. William Wilson is one episode in the anothology of film, Spirits of the Dead (1968).

Malle’s intellectual restlessness and remarkable ability to present opposing points-of-view made some of his films cause repulsion and horror. His Dearest Love (1971), horrified because of its sympathetic presentation of an adolescent boy’s initiation into an incestuous relationship. In 1978, Malle directed Pretty Baby, in the USA. The film ran into censorship problems. It dealt with a love affair between an eccentric photographer and a child prostitute in a turn of the century New Orlean’s brothel. The entire film was shot on location.

Malle made two powerful films. One is Lacombe, Lucien (1974), before he moved to the USA, while the other Goodbye, Children (1987), marked his triumphant return from the USA, after about 10 years. Lacombe, Lucien received international acclaim for its subtle portrayal of a seventeen-year-old unintelligent peasant boy who joins the French Gestapo during occupation for no particular reason and is subsequently torn between destroying and protecting a Jewish family with whose daughter he has fallen in love.

While in the USA apart from Pretty Baby he also made Atlantic City (1980), which won the Golden Lion award at Venice in 1980. Then followed the brilliant tour-de-force conversation piece, My Dinner with Andre (1981), and few more films. Despite accusation of eclecticism because of his wide range of subjects and styles, most works of Louis Malle continue to have significance. The retrospective was a treat for film buffs.