What's in a Film? The Films of Louis Malle Quiz

Answer: Munich, Germany

The tourists introduce themselves as Mr and Mrs Bencker from Munich when they stop at the motel after a car race with Louis in Julien's flashy convertible. Veronique introduces Louis and herself as Mr and Mrs Tavernier and checks them in under that name. Louis then takes on Julien's persona a bit too much and starts talking about being a veteran of Indochina and Algeria (true of Julien), to which Mr Bencker proposes a toast "to Europe!". Whilst they are carousing, Mrs Bencker takes some shots on Julien's camera. Mr Bencker soon realizes that Louis and Veronique are using false identities but doesn't seem to mind, calling Louis a "funny little Frenchman". In fact, he seems to see France as a playground where one can drive recklessly and drink copious amounts of champagne. He rather foolishly interrupts Louis's attempt at stealing his car (a Mercedes), and Louis is just hotheaded enough to shoot him (with Julien's gun).

"Lift to the Scaffold" is a great mixture of film noir, homage to Bresson (Malle was on-set for "A Man Escaped" and he brought a lot of that film to the brilliant lift scenes in this one), and Nouvelle Vague experiment. Although it was Malle's first feature film, it doesn't show.

"Lift to the Scaffold" also (re)launched Jeanne Moreau's career. She played Florence Carala, and the scenes of her wandering through the streets of Paris in the rain with a haunting Miles Davis soundtrack are what many folk recall about the film.

Nobody behaves very well in the film since even the first victim is a cantankerous bully whose wealth (we are told by Julien) came through dubious dealings in war-torn countries. At the end the police inspector tells Florence that Julien would have got the death penalty for the murder of the Benckers (so we suppose Louis will do), whilst it'll be ten years for killing big-shot executive Simon Carala as he had a motive, but that the jury will be less lenient with her.

The red herrings: Julien is a veteran of both the Algerian War and the Indochina War. Maranello is home to Ferrari sports cars.

Answer: Polo

In fact it seems that playing polo is Raoul's main occupation. When Jeanne gets back from Paris her husband Henri mocks her with what he perceives as the fakeness of Parisian life and deems Maggy "fake chic", but then says he's very fond of Maggy and shows Jeanne the Women's Page in his newspaper (The Burgundy Monitor) where there is a photo of "Marguerite Thiebaut Leroy (Maggy) awarding Raoul Flores the Carven Cup at the Bagatelle Polo Club". This is the first hint that he is actually aware of his wife's affair.

At the time of its release "The Lovers" caused quite a stir for the sexual nature of some of the scenes and was embroiled in a historic obscenity case in Ohio involving a cinema owner being convicted. The conviction was overruled at Supreme Court. By today's standards the scenes are mild to say the least and everything is hinted at rather than depicted.

"The Lovers" isn't one of Malle's best films and seems naïve when compared to the rest of his oeuvre. It's by no means bad, but maybe at just 25 years old he wasn't able to give it the necessary depth, so wound up getting sentimental.

The red herrings: Henri refers to polo as "croquet on horseback". The morning after the awkward dinner party a fishing trip is planned (I wonder if Jeanne and Bernard's departure knocked that on the head?). Baseball isn't mentioned.

Answer: Yes

Right at the end of the film Auntie Albertine (dressed as a man) takes Zazie to the train station to meet her mother via métro, but hapless Zazie sleeps the whole way through the trip.

"Zazie in the Métro" is a hilarious romp around Paris with a charismatic kid at the helm. The actress who played Zazie (Catherine Demongeot) never became a star, but she did usher in Malle's use of kids as pivotal characters in his films.

An intriguing anecdote is that Vladimir Nabokov thought Demongeot would have been perfect to play Lolita in Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of his novel, "Lolita". This is all the more intriguing when one reads the novel Malle's film was based on, "Zazie in the Metro" by Raymond Queneau, in which Zazie's awareness of sexual predators (such as Pedro-surplus) and her manipulation of them is more explicit.

Malle really let go on "Zazie in the Métro" and threw in every comedy film trope going as a kind of homage to the silent era and cartoons. According to Jean-Paul Rappeneau (co-screenwriter of "Zazie"), Malle wanted to "tear apart cinematographic language just as Queneau had done with literary language..to catalogue cinematographic style and use them all in the film."

Answer: 23 Juillet

The relevance of 23rd July is never really explained in the film (unless I'm missing something), although Alain does mutter Dorothy when he looks at it. Is that when he last saw her? Was it when he had his last drink?

The tortured, world-weary character of Alain Leroy is played brilliantly by Maurice Ronet, who had also starred in "Lift to the Scaffold" as Julien Tavernier, once again a war vet. This film begins with Alain in bed with his wife's friend, but he freezes up and can't perform. He later talks about being unable to touch, and when he does manage he can't feel anything. Actress Jeanne Moreau pops up here too, as one of Alain's old drinking friends, an art dealer living in a weird artist's studio-cum-commune surrounded by philosophizing fops.

Typically, Malle had chosen a controversial subject (suicide) and dealt with it in a totally "unsensational way" as film critic Paul Ryan put it. Interestingly (bearing in mind Malle's later film "Lacombe, Lucien"), the film was loosely based on a 1931 novel of the same name written by Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, a controversial author remembered these days as a Nazi collaborator who committed suicide in 1945.

The red herrings: Dorothy is Alain's wife in "The Fire Within", and although her photo is on the mantelpiece, she never actually appears in the film. REDЯUM is written on a bathroom mirror in Stanley Kubrick's film of Stephen King's novel "The Shining". The character Charles Foster Kane (played by Orson Welles) utters "rosebud" on his deathbed in "Citizen Kane".

Answer: Florence, Italy.

The actress who played Laurent's mother Clara, Lea Massari, was indeed born in Italy (Rome to be exact) and apparently had great difficulty delivering her lines in French despite speaking the language well. She managed in the end though. She tells Laurent about growing up in Italy while he is convalescing prior to going to the spa/sanatorium.

Louis Malle had a murmur of the heart too, and much of the film is roughly based on his experience growing up listening to jazz and getting up to hijinx with his brothers. In fact, most of the film is upbeat and frivolous, and the notorious incest scene (which wasn't based on Malle's life but on a novel by Georges Bataille called "Ma Mère") is really only a small part of the story. According to Vincent Malle (Louis's younger brother), what shocked many of the film's critics was the fact that the film has a happy ending and nobody suffers for the "sin". When they've both sobered up and realize what they've done, Clara tells Laurent "I don't want you to be unhappy or ashamed, or sorry. We'll remember it as a very beautiful and solemn moment that will never happen again. We'll never mention it again. It'll be our secret. I'll remember it without remorse, tenderly. I hope you'll do the same." Laurent then sneaks off to seduce one of the girls his own age at the sanatorium.

About the red herrings: one of Laurent's favourite jazz players is Dizzy Gillespie, who was born in Cheraw, South Carolina. Namur is the capital of the French-speaking region of Belgium called Wallonia. Paris is the capital of France.

Answer: A miniature coffin with his name on it

Lucien's mum, who claims she is in town for the fair, makes an impromptu visit to Lucien, who she finds at the Horns' abode, in order to thank him for the money he has been sending her, and bring him a chicken. The vast abyss between this power-wielding brute's rural background and the Horns' Parisian manners and classy sophistication, symbolized by Albert's tailoring skills and France's piano playing, is never more heightened than in this scene. Neither is the contempt shown by Monsieur Horn's German-speaking mother.

Lucien's mother has also come to say he can never return to his village, and to give him the miniature coffin with his name and a swastika on it. Lucien brushes off the threat by saying "It's nothing, we get them every day." His mum warns him she has heard they (the resistance) are going to kill him, and urges him to go away, to which he replies "I like it here".

"Lacombe, Lucien" is arguably Malle's most controversial film (especially in France) since it belies the myth that everybody in occupied France was either in or supported the resistance, and furthermore the film is full of ambiguities, which is not how some in French society want to see the years of Nazi occupation. It's also provocative thanks to the brilliant portrayal of Lucien, played by novice actor Pierre Blaise, who is amoral, coarse, brutish and impulsive. All of his decisions to act, whether they be grassing on a resistance leader (and hence condemning him to death), or bringing (warm) Champagne to the Horns' home to woo France Horn, seem to be made on the spur of the moment. However, Malle somehow avoids judging him, but merely shows him, just as he does with all his characters, which might be the key to what makes Malle such a top director.

Answer: A badger

The opening scene shows us a badger sniffing around on a country road at what appears to be just before dawn. Then a car comes speeding along, hits the poor old badger, and out steps a woman (Lily) disguised as a man, albeit just by hiding her long hair under a hat and wearing a trench coat. She then drives on, and Malle's bemusing futuristic/sci-fi/fantasy/fairy tale/surrealist hybrid take on "Alice in Wonderland" kicks off.

At the time of its release "Black Moon" confounded both the public and the critics, and then swiftly disappeared. It has since been dug up and has garnered its fans, but remains beguiling. Louis Malle's brother has said of the film "I don't know quite what he (Louis) wanted to do, frankly." I'm quite fond of it myself, but I'd struggle to explain why.

All the choices of animals are in the film, as well as many others. The praying mantis is seen when Lily is lying on some grass prior to getting to the house. The same scene shows us other creepy-crawlies (a millipede, some cockroaches) and shows off Malle's documentary filmmaking skills. Apparently, Louis Malle had become fascinated by the mix of animals in Indian mythology and everyday life when making his documentary "Phantom India", which was, by the way, his favourite film of his own.

A pig is repeatedly seen being chased by a group of naked children. An eagle is beheaded by Brother Lily, a scene that Lily has already seen in a painting hanging on the walls of the house.

Answer: E. J. Bellocq

In this controversial film (Louis Malle's first American production), the character of Bellocq (played by Keith Carradine) is possibly the most difficult and unnerving. Whilst the prostitutes and their customers ("johns" in the film) are doing what you would expect them to be doing, Bellocq seems to have his morals all mixed up. He clearly sees the women as fascinating subject matter for his art, but when Violet (played by Brooke Shields) asks him why he doesn't ever "go upstairs", he gives vague answers that hint at a moral high ground hidden behind his detached façade. Later, that façade and sanctimoniousness crumble when Violet claims to know all about men and he replies "I'm different, well, maybe not after all, because I'm all yours Violet".

There is no hint that the real-life Bellocq was ever sexually involved with prostitutes, never mind underage ones. His historically important photographic work came to the public's attention in the 1970s when negatives were unearthed and printed. Oddly, some of the faces had been scratched out, possibly by the artist himself although the truth isn't known. In the film Malle playfully has Violet scratching some of the faces out on Papa's negatives when she's frustrated at the lack of attention she is receiving from him.

The red herrings; at the turn of the century, Alfred Stieglitz founded the Photo-Secession movement, which endorsed avant-garde photography through the publication of "Camera Work" magazine. Antonio Fargas played Professor, the ragtime piano player in "Pretty Baby". The title comes from one of the songs he played and sang. He is more widely known as Huggy Bear in TV show "Starsky and Hutch". Martin Behrman was mayor of New Orleans at the time the brothels were outlawed and said "you can make it illegal, but you can't make it unpopular."

Answer: An electric blanket

Early on in the film Wally decides to ask lots of questions in order to get through what he anticipates will be an unpleasant dinner, and Andre just talks and talks about all the things he has been up to since they last met. The experiences get more and more extreme and the conversation more and more intense. Although Wally seems quite cynical about some of the conclusions Andre has drawn, he is obviously genuinely intrigued to find out more. Although they seem to agree that people tend to perform roles in their lives and are often on automatic pilot, he can't agree that comforts, such as an electric blanket, separate us from reality and make us live in a dream world where we are no longer aware of realities such as the cold. In fact Wally says he'd "never give up my electric blanket... it gets cold in New York" and says he's "looking for more comfort."

In a way, "My Dinner with Andre" isn't that much of a Malle film since Wallace "Wally" Shawn and Andre Gregory (the two main actors in the film who used their own names but denied playing themselves) had already written the screenplay when Malle got involved. However, Malle's non-intrusive, subtle direction (perhaps something he learnt while making documentaries?) certainly helps the film work. And work it does, quite amazingly considering it's just two men talking.

Answer: He limps.

Joseph's character is not as transparent as it might appear and he is one of the key protagonists in the story. At the school he seems to have found his role in society, and he is crucial to the boys' lives with his black-market trade. When French militiamen search the school looking for draft-dodgers, Joseph boasts to the pupils that he knows that one of the teachers is using a false name, but that he doesn't care as his limp will always keep him out of the war, a feeble attempt at seeing his impediment as a bonus since he's clearly (and justifiably) distressed by the constant jibes and bullying. Later on when his illicit trade is discovered and Père Jean sacks him, Joeseph not only wants revenge but also needs to feel needed, this time by the Germans rather than the boys. Unfortunately for Joseph he has switched sides very late on in the conflict and in the wrong direction.

Père Jean is also an intriguing character since he risks his own life for the Jewish boys, yet feels he has to fire Joseph. In another scene Jean gets in line to take the Eucharist with his fellow pupils, but Père Jean just can't place the host in his gaping mouth so skips him, risking awkward questions to be asked.

The film, which was partly based on Malle's childhood experience (certainly the main events, if not some of the details), was a huge success and remains one of Malle's best, and best-known, films.