Had he made the playful Zazie Dans le Metro first, Louis Malle would have been considered one of them - the upstart French filmmakers who ushered in The New Wave: Godard, Truffaut, Rivette, Chabrol.
Elevator to the Gallows Malle's Polished First Film
But it was not with the experimentalism of that set with which he announced himself. Louis Malle, who would have been 75 this month, came to film with a coat of fine polish his contemporaries lacked. Although his first film, Elevator to the Gallows, was in many ways completely in their vein (small, cosmopolitan, film noire-influenced,) it stood separate from their work like a dinner jacket in a closet full of trench coats.
If the well-to-do Malle had a kindred spirit in that movement, it was the lower middle class Francois Truffaut. Both, unlike Godard and Chabrol, were creatures of the heart rather than the head. But where Truffaut's genius concentrated largely on the romantically slighted, Malle's great talent lay in getting audiences to accept his characters until their most absurd or offensive actions earned a seal of approval.
The list of these "ordinary offenders" is endless - the lovers in Elevator, the boy in Murmur of the Heart, the juvenile in Pretty Baby. And the sins for which we willingly forgave them - murder, incest, prostitution - just as long.
Malle Peaked in the Late 1970s
Film by film, these transgressions grew in size - so much so that by the time the New Wavers were clearly plateauing in the late 70's, each making increasingly maudlin work, Malle was reaching a peak.
The 70's, in fact, was the decade of his finest work, from the tricky Lacombe Lucien to the shockingly elegiac Pretty Baby - that last title the crown jewel of an unheralded American period with too many films -like Alamo Bay and Crackers - that have today been forgotten.
Au Revoir Les Enfants
His last great success was the autobiographical Au Revoir Les Enfants, which swept the French Oscars in 1987. Today, it is considered the last masterpiece of the era of French cinema that began with Truffaut's 400 Blows in 1959, a film with which it shares a great deal. Its lack of shock value didn't end up ushering in a gentler, tamer Louis Malle however; the film was quickly followed by more characteristically defiant work.
Judging from his films, Malle was refined, complex, professional, challenging, sympathetic, and above all, a man looking to be appreciated in every one of his guises.
Remembering him on what would have been his 75th then, is to know that he has not died in vain.
