Louis malle

Louis Malle (Thumeries, October 30, 1932 - Beverly Hills, California, November 23, 1995) was a French cameraman, screenwriter, documentarian and film director, director of notable films and documentaries. He started conducting in France in 1955; Later, he lived and worked in the United States from 1978 to 1986, but returned to his country in 1987, where he continued his work.

Trajectory

Beginnings

Born in Thumeries, Nord department in 1932, Malle came from a family of sugar industrialists (he was the grandson of Henri Béghin, the founder of the Beghin-Say sugar brand), who made their fortunes in the Napoleonic Wars.

He grew up in a very wealthy environment and went through different Catholic boarding schools (among them, the one he will evoke in his film Goodbye, Boys). At fourteen, he started directing with his father's 8mm camera. He studied Political Science at the Sorbonne, and it was during these years that he became determined to become a filmmaker, despite the opposition of his family.

A friend of his who was part of the film crew on Jacques-Yves Cousteau's ship Calypso, had to give up his position to Louis and in 1955 he took over as assistant director and cameraman on the documentary The Silent World, for which he received the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, together with Jacques-Yves Cousteau. The following projects of his, films and documentaries, will obtain less consensus, and would be approached from a critical plane.

He then works with Robert Bresson to prepare (and partly shoot) Un condamné à mort s'est échappé; he finds this director's work with non-professional actors impressive. At that time, the Nouvelle vague movement started, to which Malle never belonged, since he developed his own path in parallel, alone, according to his own motivations.

He directed his first feature film at the age of 25, Elevator to the Gallows (1957) with Jeanne Moreau in which he showed his passion for jazz, using an original score by Miles Davis. Later, he made Los amantes (1958), also with Jeanne Moreau and in which he attacked the bourgeoisie.

Later on, he decided to adapt one of Raymond Queneau's most difficult stories, Zazie in the subway (1960), a fun, well-controlled and enthusiastic film. Later he shot Fuego fatuo (1963), which dealt with depression and suicide: it was based on a tragic story, the same name by the collaborator Pierre Drieu La Rochelle. The weight of Camus and the theater of the absurd mark his trajectory.

In 1968, he moved away from France and fiction to shoot Calcutta, a documentary about the lives of peasants in India.

Two controversies

Upon returning from his trip, Malle shot a film that caused great controversy: The Murmur to the Heart (1971). The film evokes the incestuous (albeit romantic) relationship between a mother and her son; A subject that is also discussed without making any type of moral judgment, which will be usual in this director, where there are neither innocent nor guilty, since it shows that life is more complex. The spectator must forge his own opinion of him, which the director must not impose on him.

Three years later, the controversy it aroused was political in nature. In Lacombe Lucien (1974), with a careful script, shared with the novelist Patrick Modiano, he worked with non-professional actors (like the protagonist) mixed with professionals, just as Robert Bresson did. Malle described the slow progress of a young peasant, from an uprooted and humble family, towards collaborationism, near Toulouse, an area where there were prominent Nazi massacres. Nor did he formulate any kind of marked judgment there, he did not describe the young collaborationist as a complete monster, only as someone adrift who was wrong (although the initial scenes of serial hunting of animals, for his part, showed his coldness and distance). In any case, Malle wanted to show a France that had been hidden.

Only part of the press and critics praised it, because the film was well made; another, described the film as dubious and was reproached for not differentiating behaviors better (thus, Libération). The most detailed critique, in Cahiers du Cinéma, from 1974, pointed out in a monographic issue the danger of 'retro' (which at that time was taking shape with Liliana Cavani, with her absurd union of Nazism and eroticism), as a way of making history that was not sufficiently current that posed a kind of universal, abstract, and non-hierarchical contradiction of behaviors. Michel Foucault himself He participated in a dense debate in that magazine, distinguishing different films from others (Malle would be of interest in his opinion) and pointing out the concealment of social conflicts within the cinema marked by De Gaulle, which had just disappeared.

Move to the United States

At the bitterest point of this controversy, Malle decided to move to the United States where she filmed, among other films, Little Girl (1978), with the young Brooke Shields and above all Atlantic City (1980), with Burt Lancaster and Susan Sarandon, where he recounts the misadventures of a retired rogue and his neighbor, in the city of casinos. In 1985 she shot the documentary God's Country about the lives of poor American workers.

The consecration since 1987

When he returned to France in 1987, he returned to the subject that had made him leave: the Nazi occupation of France, through a film that will be the high point of his career, Goodbye, boys (1987). In a Catholic school, during the occupation, a bourgeois boy discovers that one of his classmates is Jewish.

In this film, Louis Malle recounts his memories of the war. The story, partly autobiographical, as he witnessed a similar situation during his childhood, is about a young Jew who had hidden in his boarding school, but was later found out by the Gestapo and deported. Malle declared that this subject had always haunted him and that, in fact, this tragic story is what had led him to the cinema.

The film also takes up some elements from previous films; Lacombe Lucien's takes the collaborationist against his will; of The breath in the heart, the intense relationship between mother and son. Here he does not issue any value judgment on anyone either, he only hints at a fatalism in accordance with his literary tastes. The film was a success and won several awards.

He then filmed the comedy Milou in May (1989), as well as Herida (1992). Her last film was an adaptation of Vanya on 42nd Street (1994), a play by Anton Chekhov; This Vanya on 42nd Street was released on October 19 of that year in the United States and on January 25, 1995 in France.

His first marriage to Anne-Marie Deschodt lasted from 1965 to 1967. He then had two more children: Manuel Cuotemoc (b. 1971), born from his relationship with Gila von Weitershausen, and their daughter Justine (b. 1974)., of his relationship with Alexandra Stewart. From 1980 until his death, he was married to American actress Candice Bergen, with whom he had a daughter, Chloe Malle (b. 1985). He died of lymphoma on November 23, 1995 in Los Angeles, at age 63.

Filmography

First period in France

• 1955: The world of silence (Le monde du silence)with Jacques-Yves Cousteau (documentary)
• 1957: Lift for the sieve (Ascenseur pour l'échafaud)
• 1958: Lovers (Les Amants)
• 1960: Zazie (Zazie dans le métro)
• 1961: A private life (Vie privée)
• 1962: Vive le tour (documentary)
• 1963: Fauous fire (Le feu follet)
• 1965: Viva Maria!
• 1966: Ladrón de Paris (Le Voleur)
• 1968: Extraordinary Narrations ("Histoires extraordinaires"), episode
• 1969: Calcutta (Calcutta) (documentary)
• 1969: L'Inde fantôme (TV) (documentary)
• 1971: The breath of the heart (Le souffle au cœur)
• 1973: Humain trop humain (documentary)
• 1973: Place de la République (documentary)
• 1974: Lacombe Lucien
• 1975: The Unicorn (Black Moon) (science-fiction film, surrealist, atypical in his filmography)
• 1976: Close Up (documentary)
• 1977: Dominique Sanda ou Le rêve éveillé (documentary TV)

Period in the United States

• 1978: The little one ("The Petite")
• 1980: Atlantic City
• 1981: My dinner with André ("My Dinner with André")
• 1983: Crackers
• 1985: Alamo Bay
• 1985: God's Country (documentary)
• 1986: And the Pursuit of Happiness (documentary)

Second period in France

• 1987: Bye, guys. ("Au revoir, les enfants")
• 1989: Milou in May ("Milou en mai")
• 1992: Heir ("Damage")
• 1994: Vania on 42nd Street ("Vanya on 42nd Street")

Awards and distinctions

Oscar Awards

Cannes International Film Festival

Venice International Film Festival

• Lift for the sieve:
  • Louis-Delluc Prize 1957.
• Lacombe Lucien:
  • BAFTA 1975 Award for Best Film.
• Atlantic City:
  • BAFTA Award for Best Director 1982.
• Bye, guys.:
  • César Awards of the French Film Academy to the best film, to the best director, to the best original script or adaptation, to the best photograph, to the best decorated, to the best sound and to the best assembly.
  • Louis-Delluc Award.
  • BAFTA Award to the best director.
  • 1988 European Film Awards: best script.
  • Bodil 1989 Award for the best European film.
• Milou en mai:
  • David de Donatello Award 1990 to the best foreign director.

BAFTA Awards 1991: Academy Fellowship Award for his entire career.

Fonts

• Wikipedia in French.
• Biography (in English)
• Biography (in English)
• Louis Malle en Internet Movie Database(in English).
• The Fatuo Fire, Louis Malle