Ever since Louis Malle’s masterful Lacombe Lucien was lambasted by critics during its 1974 release, more or less pushing Malle into artistic self-exile in the years that followed, French cinema has generally shied away from stories dealing with Nazi collaborators.
This is partly because it’s hard to make a film about such an unlikeable character: Who wants to watch two hours of someone saluting Hitler and willingly sending Jews off to the concentration camp? It’s also because France still has a hard time reckoning with WWII, which involved heroic acts by both the Resistance and its exiled leadership (the subject of two high-profile Cannes entries this year, Moulin and De Gaulle: Tilting Iron), but also acts of cowardice, or worse, by those who supported the Vichy regime.
A Man of His Time
The Bottom Line
A scathingly fresh look at wartime fascism.
