I get very excited when I finish an artist’s entire body of work. While French director Louis Malle is celebrated for his seven documentaries as well as these twenty narrative features, I have worked hard for years to see all of the latter, some of which are nearly impossible to find in the States. (I own the documentaries and will watch and rank them as well. Sometime.) Last night, I finally watched the most elusive of the bunch, which is extra exciting because Malle currently stands at #7 on my list of Favorite Directors. I now have all the data to back up that honor.
Malle’s career ran from 1954 to 1994 (the year before his death) and is remarkable not just for its consistent quality but for its huge scope and variety. Every film he made could be slotted into a different genre. He careened between styles and traditions with uncanny ease and alacrity. He made many English-language movies, especially after his 1980 marriage to Candace Bergen—a loving marriage that ended only with his death from lymphoma in 1995. While there are other chameleonic directors out there, Malle was the most (how interesting) malleable. Every film is unique, and almost every film is truly good.
Here—at long last—is my ranking of all the narrative films of Louis Malle, with a little bit about each film.
Zazie dans le Métro
Malle was just as daring as he was versatile, as demonstrated by this, his third feature, adapted from a famous “unfilmable” French novel. An absurd comedy of chaos, Zazie is told from the imaginative perspective of a young girl during her short visit to relatives in Paris. Very few films can match this one for sheer playfulness in the surreal world of 1960.
Elevator to the Gallows
Malle’s first film, this tense and twisty noir features unforeseeable reversals of fortune set to an equally famous Miles Davis score and the unforgettable debut of Jeanne Moreau, who makes walking through the rainy city all night look chic and just as suspenseful as all the action she doesn’t know about happening close by.
Vanya on 42nd Street
The final film Malle completed is mostly a filmed version of André Gregory’s invitation-only close-quarters production of Chekhov’s immortal play, Uncle Vanya. Featuring a breakout performance by a young Julianne Moore, the play is presented in a bare and intimate way that blurs the lives of the actors with those of their characters. This is top-of-the-list must-see viewing for theatre folk!
May Fools
A winky weekend-in-the-country romp, May Fools finds a rich family coming together for intrigue, adultery, and the funeral that drew them there. Class-minded, this delight of a film takes a sudden swerve into the third act that elevates the entire work.
Au Revoir les Enfants
A true French classic, this schooldays drama is based on an episode from Malle’s childhood…when his youthful concern may have sentenced a close friend to a concentration camp. The title refers to both a literal childhood goodbye and the end of childhood itself.
Black Moon
Another of Malle’s WTF swerves in tone, Black Moon is a war movie through the looking glass. With clear allusions to Lewis Carroll, it shows us a teen girl taking refuge from a literal war of the sexes in a mysterious unicorn-infested country house. The absurdist in me loves the unstable environment in which the main character makes some sort of coming-of-age journey while caring for/dealing with a bedridden old woman and endless scampering children.
A Very Private Affair
A feckless, fickle, and famous film star (played by, and clearly based on, Brigitte Bardot) tries to leave her glamorous-scandalous life for love (and a theatre producer), only to find that the world won’t let her go. An early example of the paparazzi film, Vie Privée (to use the more appropriate French title) doesn’t coast on the sex appeal of Bardot and Marcello Mastroianni, instead allowing them to prove they have talent underneath their perfect faces. Beautiful and haunting, this movie has only gained relevance in today’s world.
The Thief of Paris
French New Wave icon Jean-Paul Belmondo stars as a gentleman thief around the beginning of the twentieth century who scampers across housetops in expensive suits, driven by a sort of criminal addiction that dooms him to an unhappy life punctuated by unsubtle burglary. Cool and sexy, he is the definition of the smooth criminal…and watching his heists and conquests is more fun than it perhaps should be.
My Dinner with André
One of Malle’s best-known films, My Dinner with André is just that: a dinner date between Wallace Shawn and André Gregory that elicits tales of adventure, tedium, and philosophy and leave each man changed.
The Fire Within
A film I desperately need to rewatch, this one concerns a man terrified to leave the rehab center that has pronounced him stable…unless it’s for one last trip to Paris and a quick suicide on the side.
The Lovers
The other Malle film I need to watch again, The Lovers is his second feature and was scandalous for its frank sexuality in 1958. Of course, there’s more going on than just eroticism, as the film is also a brutal satire of its current society.
Pretty Baby
Speaking of scandalous, it doesn’t get more controversial than this explicit tale of a twelve-year-old prostitute played by Brooke Shields at the same age. While the film is a disturbing sexualization of a child, Shields claims that the atmosphere on set was respectful, safe, and fun. Audiences have trouble believing her.
Atlantic City
An odd pairing of the aging Burt Lancaster and the fresh-faced Susan Sarandon, this is one of two Malle films (the other is next) about the idea and reality of America. While it may be seemingly low on my list, Atlantic City is a steady and unexpected swing by the director that earned him his only Oscar nomination for Best Director.
Alamo Bay
A Vietnam War veteran returns home to find his fishing town flooded with innocent Vietnamese fishermen whom he cannot release from his experiences overseas. My initial review read simply “There is no end to the digging of graves/Or the cowardly evils that man will call brave.”
Murmur of the Heart
You may have realized that Malle liked to make sexually provocative films, but don’t be fooled into thinking they are all the same. Each is an entirely different thing. This thing involves a mother-son relationship that crosses the line without blame or regret. And you kind of see why. The power to present the most universal of taboos in a sympathetic light proves Malle’s skill as a storyteller, even if this is a story I don’t care to hear retold.
Lacombe, Lucien
Lucien Lacombe tries to join the French resistance during WWII but is told he is too young. To spite them, he signs up with the Nazis, who happily exploit his inexperience, creating a monster who has lost so much of his humanity that the film’s title names him as if on a list of disposable labor: last name, first name.
Viva Maria!
I’ll let the Letterboxd summary speak for itself: “An IRA operative escapes to the Americas and teams up with a circus singer to create a popular vaudeville act. When the singer falls for a rebel, they leave the circus behind to become fierce revolutionaries.”
Crackers
Not Ritz nor Saltines, these title characters are white guys in a racially diverse neighborhood of San Francisco who put together an ill-conceived heist aimed at one of their own out of financial desperation. Various colorful characters get in the way, including Christine Baranski’s meter maid/prostitute.
Spirits of the Dead (segment “William Wilson”)
This anthology (or omnibus) film consists of three short films by three big-name European directors, each based on an obscure Edgar Allen Poe story. Jane Fonda’s risible French-language “performance” in the first segment ruins the entire film, but Malle’s tale of a man physically split into an unfeeling cad and a righteous defender manages to be twisted and sexy at the same time, thanks mostly to sex symbols Alain Delon and Brigitte Bardot.
Damage
The only truly bad film in Malle’s career, Damage casts Jeremy Irons as (shock…) a sexual deviant obsessed with Juliette Binoche’s oddly troubled younger woman. As ill-conceived as all these late-eighties/early-nineties erotic thrillers, the film is almost as lifeless and disturbing as Binoche’s necrophiliac sexual preferences. Never should anyone waste their time with this film—but one stinker out of twenty is no shabby feat!