Salubrious Scandals/Effective Provocations: Identity Politics Surrounding "Lacombe Lucien"
2000; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 17; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/3190094
ISSN1549-3377
Autores Tópico(s)Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics
ResumoLouis Malle's 1974 film, Lacombe Lucien, shocked and incensed many of its critics in the 1970s and continues to do so now for some. Such strong reactions are emblematic of the profound identity crisis France has experienced in coming to terms with the relationship between the Vichy government and the population's actions during World War II. As recently as 1992, Stanley Hoffmann accused the film of making its own false myth of the Occupation (with collaborationism too prominently portrayed).' Taking another tack I would like to propose that the supposed faults that render Lacombe Lucien more provocative than thought provoking (to use Henry Rousso's critical evaluation)2 are the mark of artistic strategies that challenge accepted notions of national, personal, and ethnic identities in France, both during the Occupation (an initial historical content) and in its subsequent return as artistic memory (re)activating identity crises. The choice of Django Reinhardt's wonderful music for the film subtly illustrates the point. The score is remembered as a distinctly music of the thirties and forties-France's jazz-but performed and written by a Frenchman whose origins do not fit the mold of the authentic Frenchman. In the Larousse Dictionnaire des noms propres (Dictionary of Proper Names) Reinhardt is referred to as French, although he was born in Belgium of gypsy origins. With no formal education in his early days-he could barely write-Reinhardt performed his guitar music while wandering through France with a gypsy caravan. Having lost the use of two fingers on his left hand as a result of a burn, Reinhardt developed a highly original, virtuoso style of play to compensate for the handicap. This French style, paradoxically the result of his handicap, is the only one to have influenced American jazz artists. Now it is certainly not uncommon for artists to be recognized as representatives of one country when they were born in another, but in the exploration of identity crises during the Occupation, Reinhardt's mixed origins become crucial to rethinking what it
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