Studying French Cinema by Isabelle Vanderschelden

Author:Isabelle Vanderschelden
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: PER004030, Performing Arts/Film & Video/History & Criticism, PER004020, Performing Arts/Film & Video/Guides & Reviews
Publisher: Auteur
Published: 2013-04-22T00:00:00+00:00

QUESTIONS OF MISE-EN-SCÈNE

In Louis Malle’s films, the mise-en-scène and camerawork intentionally avoid sentimentalism or nostalgia, often incorporating factual filming strategies, especially in Lacombe Lucien. This section looks more specifically at the use of colour and music in the two films, complementing the above analysis of camera movement and editing strategies as narrative tools.

The use of colour is different in the two films. In Au revoir les enfants, toned down hues suggest a combination of period drama and realistic feel. Malle had initially considered using black and white but rejected this possibility (French 1993: 174). He worked with his photographer to achieve an effect similar to black and white while using colour film – opting for dark or saturated colours and little extra lighting, ‘removing any contrived warmth, leaving a cold, haunting and hard-edged’ atmosphere (Southern 2006: 266). This is clearly evident in indoor scenes as well as the exterior ones (see the forest episode). The toned down lighting and lack of bright colours (the mother’s red lipstick being the exception) seem to act as a metaphor for the blurred memory of the narrator and subjective recollection of the past, as was sometimes suggested by critics (see Southern 2006: 267). In contrast, the lighting in Lacombe Lucien is much brighter and more contrasted. When Lucien is outdoors in the countryside at the beginning and the end of the film, he looks alive, and bright lighting is used to emphasise his instinctive blending with the natural world. Long tracking shots of him cycling through the countryside place the narrative in a precise geographical setting, adding local colour. The last scenes of the film are bathed in sunlight, granting the scenes a dreamlike pastoral quality that goes beyond realism. These contrast with the bright but artificial lighting of the hotel, and the dark, monochrome atmosphere in the Horn household.

In both films, music is mostly used diegetically. In Au revoir les enfants, the Schubert piece is practised on the piano during the music lesson, and lingers in Julien’s mind while he dreams of the music teacher in his bath; the scene of boogie jazz improvised by the two boys on the piano during the raid has the narrative function of revealing their new connivance. The soundtrack of Lacombe Lucien is more polyvalent, with recurring Django Reinhart jazz tracks. The music is mostly diegetic: in the hotel, it is often heard in the background, with jazz, familiar period popular songs and dance music contributing to a strangely artificial party atmosphere and isolating the hotel from the rest of the town; at the Horns’, France’s piano playing can be heard off-screen in an adjacent room on several occasions before she is introduced to Lucien and the audience.

This account of the narratives and formal properties of the two films has discussed the style of Louis Malle. It has also indirectly touched upon complex thematic considerations that the films address, and occasionally highlighted possible effects produced on the audience. As Lacombe Lucien became associated with a political controversy,

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