The DVD Elite

The filmmaker Louis Malle was always willing to tackle morally ambiguous subjects in a frank way. In a career spanning four decades and 20 films, he has coolly examined incest, pedophilia, the Nazi occupation, and the French collaboration, often retaining the ambiguity and leaving the judgment up to the viewer. The Criterion Collection has compiled several of the director's best in 3 Films by Louis Malle. The films, available for the first time on DVD, all deal with one of Malle's chief preoccupations: youth and the loss of experience. To its credit, Criterion has decided to let the films speak for themselves. The few, mostly well chosen supplements are relegated to an extra supplements disc, which is available only as part of the box set.

Lacombe, Lucien

"I can't bring myself to completely despise you," says a character to Lucien Lacombe, a teenage Nazi collaborator who muscles his way into the household of a Jewish tailor in order to court his daughter. It's a sentiment that we as viewers can understand. No matter how strongly Lucien's behavior revolts our sense of morality, we invariably acknowledge his immaturity as his saving grace.

Early in the film, Lucien is rejected from joining up with the partisans. Disillusioned with the resistance, he unwittingly volunteers himself as a Gestapo informant and denounces the underground leaders in his town. He soon becomes a member of the Gestapo, and struts around menacing those around him for kicks. His ungraceful attempts to court a Jewish tailor's daughter are darkly comic and nerve-wracking. Malle claimed that he wanted to follow Lucien around without explaining or judging him. But Lucien's final and damning act of foolhardy heroism makes it hard to believe that Malle suspended judgment.

Au Revoir les Enfants

Winner of numerous awards and hands down the most overplayed film in high school French classes, Au Revoir les Enfants is by far the gentlest and most accessible offering of the batch. Malle is never less cynical and more sympathetic than in this autobiographical film about the friendship of two boys in a Catholic boarding school during the Nazi occupation-one Jewish, the other Catholic. Malle's alter ego, the 12-year-old Julien, guesses at the secret of his talented friend, Bonnet, who bathes separate from the other boys and doesn't receive communion. After some initial friction, a warm friendship develops between them, which is ultimately shattered by the betrayal of a disgruntled boarding-school employee.

Malle's direct and simple style allows the viewer to experience the film through Julien's eyes. We feel the terror in Bonnet's eyes when the Gestapo drive him and Julien back from a ill-fated game of capture-the-flag. We are incredibly and physically present with Julien on the brisk morning when he sees his friend and the head of the boarding school (based on the real-life figure of Père Jacques) disappear forever.

Murmur of the Heart

Many of Malle's films sparked debate, but nowhere was the debate louder than over Murmur of the Heart, with its provocative treatment of adolescent sexuality and climactic scene of incest.

Murmur of the Heart follows the 14-year-old Laurent Chevalier (Benoit Ferreux), a jazz enthusiast growing up in 1954. He and his older brothers, Thomas and Marc, are the Antoine Doinels of a new generation. Nothing is sacred for this bunch, who wreak havoc with their complete irreverence and high shenanigans wherever they go. This wickedly funny film will make you wish your childhood was half as wild and stylish as the three Chevaliers'.

There is a perceptible mood shift in the middle of the film, when Laurent is discovered to have a heart murmur and is taken by his mother to a hotel spa. Here Lucien's Oedipal longings, set up in the first half with a Proustian fixation on a goodnight kiss, intensify at the same time as his confidence about women his own age. The film's shocking denouement leaves us wondering if Laurent is truly weaned.