Louis Malle (French Film Directors)

Hugo Frey introduces Malle's work through a lucid analysis of his many masterpieces, including Le Feu Follet, Lacombe Lucien and Au Revoir les Enfants. He also traces the director's extended period of work in America, which resulted in powerful films such as Pretty Baby, Atlantic City and My Dinner with Andrbliogé. The book focuses on the most challenging aspects of Malle's oeuvre, his aesthetic vision, his youthful attraction to a form of right-wing pessimism, and his 1970s libertarianism. By rethinking Malle's portrayals of Nazi-occupied France, Frey demonstrates that he is of equal importance to contemporary historians as to film studies. This is a nuanced study of an important filmmaker, and a critical intervention in the debates which surround Malle's work.