The retro fashion and fascination with Nazism: Lacombe Lucien and the French film criticism

Abstract

When Louis Malle chose to put on screen the theme of the young peasant Lacombe Lucien (1974) cooptation instead of stressing the French resistance, he entered a minefield with the Cahiers du Cinéma film criticism. In a context of increasing politicization, the magazine dedicated to film articles around the theories of enunciation, semiotics, of stereotypes creation, and especially around the retro wave. For over a year, the director was accused of being fascinated by Nazism rather than report it. The taboo subject for French sparked an intense debate between Pascal Bonitzer, Serge Daney, Pascal Kané, Serge Toubiana, Michel Foucault and Marc Ferro, that we analyzed in this article to expand the understanding of the critical methodology of French film criticism at that time.