Louis Malle

The beginning of Frenchman Louis Malle’s career slightly pre-dated that of the 1960s New Wave proper.  He enjoyed initial international success co-directing a 1956 Palm d’Or winning documentary on marine life with Jacques Cousteau.  Malle’s solo debut came two years later with “Lift to the Scaffold”, a film noir as beholden to American cinema as anything his Nouvelle Vague contemporaries would later achieve, featuring a ground breaking jazz score by Miles Davis.

Later in 1958 came Malle’s first masterpiece, “The Lovers”, a tale of infidelity which scandalised the United States at the time, leading to a famous trial in which it was accused of being formally obscene.  As objectionable to Middle America as lyrical scenes of love making was the idea that the female protagonist could, without moral censure or any substantial crisis of conscience, abandon her husband and child for another man.

Malle’s next effort, “Zazie dans le métro”, is truly unique.  A slapstick comedy that draws on both silent movies and cartoons its cinematic slights of hand - created both ‘in camera’ and through editing - anticipate subtler gags in the films of Truffaut and Godard as well as later work by British directors who stole outright from the New Wave like Tony Richardson and Richard Lester.  One set piece in particular involving the title character, a precocious young girl let loose in Paris, determined to out wit any adult who might contain her natural exuberance, uses all the filmic tricks that Benny Hill would later make his own on the small screen.

Whether “Zazie” works as a whole is a different matter.  Malle’s ambition was perhaps a strength and a weakness, leading to inconsistency in his oeuvre.  At his best he was capable of commercial vehicles like “Viva Maria”, a spoof on westerns and revolutionary melodramas starring Jeanne Moreau and a never sexier Brigette Bardot, as well as heartfelt documentaries about Asia like “Phantom India” and “Calcutta”.

Malle was certainly never afraid of controversy.  His “Murmur of the Heart” has a son and mother engage in loving and mutually consensual incest, “Lacombe Lucien” was amongst the first films to seriously examine the issue of French collaboration with the Nazis, and “Pretty Baby” is the story of a child prostitute whose virginity is auctioned off at age 12.

Arguably Malle’s finest achievement is the sweet natured and gentle if elegiac drama “Atlantic City”, featuring a towering performance by Burt Lancaster as a faded, would-be gangster, and a career-making one by Susan Sarandon as an apprentice casino dealer who soaks her breasts in lemon juice.