Financial Times (London,England) November 27, 1995, Monday

A versatile risk-taker – Stephen Amidon considers the life and work Louis Malle, the French-born transatlantic film director, who died last week

Versatility is not always a virtue in a film director, suggesting as it does that the man behind the camera might be more journeyman than auteur. It is to Louis Malle’s lasting credit that he was able to produce a remarkably varied body of work without for a moment appearing to be an eye for hire. Despite working in an assortment of genres and languages, he stamped nearly all his films with his own unique fusion of visual elegance, disquieting intelligence and flinty compassion. Malle was born in 1932 into an immensely wealthy family. As a teenager in occupied France he was sent away to be educated by the Jesuits, a physically austere yet emotionally rich experience that was to prove the source of some of his greatest work. After the war, he studied political science at the Sorbonne before switching to film, serving a string of apprenticeships that were the stuff a young film maker’s dreams are made on. First, he sailed with Jacques Cousteau on the Calypso, co-directing and photographing the remarkable undersea documentary The Silent World (1956). This was followed by a job assisting the great Robert Bresson on his masterpiece, A Man Escaped, and then work as a cameraman for the legendary Jacques Tati. With such an education, it is hardly surprising that Malle’s first two films, both released in 1958, would vault him to the forefront of French New Wave directors. Frantic was a riveting, atmospheric thriller starring Jeanne Moreau and scored by Miles Davis, while The Lovers scandalised movie-goers with its frank portrayal of bourgeois sexuality. However, Malle’s affinity with the New Wave was to be short-lived – ill-advised attempts to follow the likes of Goddard into French cinema’s more turbulent waters resulted in the barely comprehensible Zazie dans le Metro (1960) and the off-kilter Bardot vehicle A Very Private Affair (1962). Malle was clearly unsuited to surf on anyone else’s wave. The rest of his career was to prove him to be a cinematic movement of one. He distinguished himself from his contemporaries with The Fire Within (1963), a dark yet hauntingly beautiful character study of the last days of a self-destructive alcoholic. But, having removed himself from the inner circle of fashionable French cinema, Malle took a while to find his true style – the remainder of the 1960s saw little first rate feature work from him, although a prolonged journey to India in the latter part of the decade resulted in several beautifully shot, controversial documentaries that focused on poverty and overcrowding on the sub-continent. In 1971, Malle came into his own when he directed the first of his two great studies of adolescence, Murmur of the Heart, a closely observed, bitter-sweet story of a fourteen year-old boy’s coming of age in a bourgeois household. This was followed by Lacombe Lucien (1973), Malle’s devastating account of a French peasant who turns Gestapo informant during the Occupation, only to then fall in love with a Jewish girl. It saw Malle at the peak of his understated powers, using simple imagery and deft characterisation to create an unforgettable study of guilt and power. Malle’s next major film charted another change of direction, as he crossed the Atlantic to begin working in Hollywood. Pretty Baby (1978) had the dubious distinction of introducing Brooke Shields in the controversial role of a 12 year-old prostitute, though in the end the film proved to be too tepid for its own good. In 1980 Malle married the actress Candice Bergen, strengthening his ties to America. His next two films were undisputed triumphs. Atlantic City (1981) was one of the finer movies of the decade, an idiosyncratic, deeply moving account of an ageing gangster which saw Burt Lancaster giving the best performance of the latter part of his career. It also earned Malle one of his three Oscar nominations. Then came another radical departure, My Dinner with Andre (1981), a delightful two-hander in which Malle managed to turn two hours of dinner table chat between theatre director Andre Gregory and playwright Wallace Shawn into a dramatic masterwork. Malle’s next two American efforts, however, suggested that his flirtation with Hollywood had soured. Crackers (1984) was a humourless caper drama set in San Francisco, while Alamo Bay (1985) proved to be a well-meaning but uninspired treatment of Vietnamese refugees in Texas. Any thoughts that Malle’s career was in decline were dispelled when the director again changed course, returning to his native language and his wartime childhood to create his greatest film, Au Revoir les Enfants (1987). Set in a Jesuit boarding school in 1944, it tells the story of the tenuous friendship between a privileged young Catholic boy and a Jewish student who is being hidden from the Nazis by the headmaster. Unsentimental yet moving, simple yet profound, it is the quintessential Louis Malle film, as well as one of the great cinematic testaments of youth. Less successful was Damage (1992), adapted from Josephine Hart’s sweaty-palmed novel of adultery among the British ruling classes. Although the film has its defenders, Malle’s characteristic restraint proved a poor match for the fraught subject matter. Fortunately, he was able to make one more fine film before succumbing to lymphoma. Vanya on 42nd Street (1994) was a suitably daring rendition of Chekhov’s great play set within the context of a rehearsal in a bare Manhattan studio. It is fitting that the last film by this least conventional of leading directors should be such a risk taker. Malle’s career was not without its failures, though these were always the result of an ambition and daring that is rare among A-list directors. It would have been easy for him to have spent his career churning out well-made French pictures dealing with the occupation or satirising the bourgeoisie. His decision to stretch himself with nearly every film while retaining a place in the mainstream makes him unique among modern film makers. With his death, world cinema has lost one of its most adventurous spirits.