New Left Review I/30, March-April 1965

Lee Russell

Louis Malle

The nouvelle vague is now at least six years old and the time has come to take stock. Perhaps the best way to do this is to consider the work of Louis Malle, never at the heart of the group who took the headlines, yet in a way the nouvelle vague’s arch-exponent, and certainly its most consistently successful in terms of both box-office and prizes. In his latest film, Le Feu Follet, Malle showed himself perhaps closer to the original spirit of the movement than others who have sheered off in their own personal or hyper-personal directions. Malle, the most eclectic, is also the most typical. The paradox need not surprise: unable to develop a style with its own dynamic, the eclectic devises a composite, whose surface shimmers with unresolved tensions, but which is easily assimilable. In the wrong circumstances, the eclectic becomes either an academic or a grotesque. Malle, an intelligent director, has been saved from these extremes both by the progressive atmosphere surrounding him and by his own good judgement. But, whereas Godard is Godard and Truffaut is Truffaut, Malle is the nouvelle vague.

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