Louis Malle

Louis Malle (born October 30, 1932 in Thumeries , France , † November 23, 1995 in Los Angeles ) was a French film director and screenwriter .

Life

Louis Malle was born in Thumeries ( North Department ) in 1932 . He was the fifth of seven children in a wealthy industrial family where he was raised Catholic. At the age of 14, he took his first pictures with his father's 8mm camera. Malle soon made the decision to become a director and spent a lot of time in cinemas.

Nevertheless, he first began to study political science, but then switched to the film school in Paris in 1951 , which he left in 1953 without a degree. The material is too theoretical for him. Malle went on a two-year research trip on the Calypso as cameraman and assistant to deep-sea researcher Jacques-Yves Cousteau . There he learned the technique of filmmaking, while the later Oscar-winning documentary The Silent World was made. The film was also the first documentary to win the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1956 . Overall, Malle stayed with Cousteau for four years. After one of his colleagues had an accident on the sunken passenger steamer Andrea Doria while shooting underwater in the USA and he himself suffered a serious injury to his eardrum, he gave up his work as an underwater cameraman. In his next job, he was an assistant to Robert Bresson's A Man on Death Run Away (1956).

After a few small, unfinished projects, he made his first own feature film Elevator to the Scaffold in 1957 , which became very famous not least for the soundtrack by Miles Davis . Other films followed such as Privatleben, Die Liebenden and Zazie . After a few short films, he shot the film Viva Maria in Mexico in 1965 ! . Back in France, he did not go to Paris, but to the French provinces, where he married the actress Anne-Marie Deschott . Le Voleur was created again in Paris in 1967 . However, his own high demands drove him into his first creative crisis. He said he felt like everything was repeating itself and he didn't want to make a film every two years for the rest of his life. He divorced, sold his Paris apartment and went to India . There he returned to his documentary beginnings, but again not for long. Eventually he returned to the French provinces - in stark contrast to his colleagues in the Nouvelle Vague , whose life largely took place in the big city. From 1970 to 1973 he was in a relationship with the German actress Gila von Weitershausen , who is the mother of his son Manuel Cuotemoc .

Possibly related to his family and creative crisis, a new theme appeared in his works: childhood. Herzflimmern (1971) came about with a partly autobiographical background, followed in 1973 by Lacombe, Lucien through a young collaborator in occupied France. At the time, he privately had two children with two different women. In 1976 he finally went to the USA and he commuted between southern France and the USA for ten years, where he became one of the most successful French directors. In 1980 he married the actress Candice Bergen for the second time . He also shot Atlantic City, USA with Burt Lancaster and the then unknown Susan Sarandon . In 1986 he returned to France. In 1987 his highly acclaimed and award-winning autobiographical film Goodbye, Children was released . His film Doom (1992) was the first film since Das Irrlicht, the plot of which takes place in the present. In 1995, Louis Malle died of lymphoma in the United States at the age of 63 .

plant

Malle was an important representative of the Nouvelle Vague , but was still considered an outsider because he was seldom in Paris and, unlike the other directors, did not come from the theoretical side, but made his films as a practitioner and technician.

A certain restlessness, the provocation and the temporal distance to the topics or content are characteristic of Male's films. Most of his films are set in the past. He didn't commit to a specific genre. Recurring topics were: loneliness, being trapped in a social position / society, suicide, young people's experiences with the adult world, the adult world from the perspective of a child, being shackled by a social origin, the mendacity of the bourgeoisie, but also violations of taboos , Relationships and sexuality. Often a political background (for example May 68 , fascism ) formed the framework for the action. Most of his films are about characters caught in the web of fate.

For Malle, the film Le Voleur was a key work because it reflects his relationship with filmmaking : Malle couldn't help it, he could never stop.

Filmography (selection)

• 1955: The Silent World (Le Monde du silence) - Director (Documentary)
• 1957: Lift to the scaffold (L'Ascenseur pour l'échafaud) - director and screenplay
• 1958: The Lovers (Les Amants) - director, screenplay and production
• 1960: Zazie (Zazie dans le Métro) - director and film manuscript
• 1961: Private Life (La Vie privée) - Direction and screenplay
• 1963: Das Irrlicht (Le Feu follet) - Director and screenplay
• 1965: Viva Maria! (Viva Maria!) - Direction, screenplay and production
• 1967: The Thief of Paris (Le Voleur) - director, screenplay and production
• 1968: Extraordinary stories (Histoires extraordinaires) - director and screenplay
• 1969: Moneten for the kitten (La Fiancée du pirate) - actor
• 1969: Calcutta (Calcutta) - director, screenplay and camera (documentary)
• 1971: Herzflimmern (Le Souffle au cœur) - director and screenplay
• 1973: Lacombe, Lucien (Lacombe Lucien) - director; Script in collaboration with Patrick Modiano
• 1974: Humain, trop humain - director, screenplay and camera
• 1974: Place de la République - director (documentary)
• 1975: Black Moon - director, screenplay and production
• 1977: Pretty Baby - directed, written, and produced
• 1979: Atlantic City, USA (Atlantic City) - Director
• 1981: Mein Essen mit André (My Dinner with André) - director
• 1984: 5 crooks make break (Crackers) - director
• 1984: Alamo Bay - directed and produced
• 1986: God's Country - director, screenplay and cinematography (documentary)
• 1986: ... and the pursuit of happiness (... and the pursuit of happiness) - director, screenplay and camera (documentary)
• 1987: Goodbye, Children (Au revoir les enfants) - Director, screenplay and production
• 1989: A Comedy in May (Milou en mai) - director and screenplay
• 1992: Verfassnis (Damage) - direction and production
• 1994: Vanja on 42nd Street - director and actor

DVD

• Louis Malle: India . Contains Calcutta and Phantom India on 3 DVD . Reflections , Pierrot Le Fou, 2011; French, German subtitles, 462 min.

literature

• Vinzenz B. Burg: Against all fashions: fragment about Louis Malle. In: Hans Günther Pflaum (Ed.): Jahrbuch Film 84/85. Reports - Reviews - Dates. Carl Hanser, Munich 1984, ISBN 3-446-14145-6 , pp. 72-83.
• Peter W. Jansen , Wolfram Schütte (eds.): Louis Malle (series Film 34). Carl Hanser, Munich 1985, ISBN 3-446-14320-3 .
• Peter W. Jansen, Christa Maerker : The citizen's forbidden self: Louis Malle. In: Jörg-Dieter Kogel: European film art. Portraits of directors. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1990, ISBN 3-596-24490-0 , pp. 93-104.
• Philip French (ed.): Louis Malle on Louis Malle. Alexander Verlag, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-89581-009-6 .
• Susanne Marschall: Louis Malle 1932–1995. In: Thomas Koebner (Ed.): Film directors. Biographies, descriptions of works, filmographies (2nd, reviewed and updated edition). Reclam, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-15-010455-6 , pp. 443-448.
• Volker Fastenau: "… comme si on appuyait sur une sonette?" Investigations into the conception of film sound aesthetics in the feature films and documentaries Louis Malles. epOs-Music, Osnabrück 2004, ISBN 978-3-923486-01-4 .
• Nathan Southern with Jacques Weissgerber: The Films of Louis Malle - A Critical Analysis. McFarland, Jefferson, North Carolina 2006, ISBN 0-7864-2300-5 .
• Louis Malle: Témoignage. in: Helga Bories-Sawala, Catherine Szczesny, Rolf Sawala: La France occupée et la Résistance (series: Simply French). Schöningh, Paderborn 2008, ISBN 978-3-140-46262-4 . (predominantly French, partly German, many illustrations and original documents; vocabulary), p. 38f. (Malle reports on an experience that later led to the film Au revoir, les enfants . (First 1973))

Web links

• Louis Malle in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Short biography on Deutschlandfunk in the series "We Remember" from November 23, 2005
• Literature by and about Louis Malle in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ French film director Malle dies of cancer