Tone Deaf

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

THE GOOD AND THE BAD

Directed by Claude Lelouch

Screenplay by Claude Lelouch

Claude Lelouch is fascinated by relationships between people who have not actually met and stories that end where most movies begin. In And Now My Love, he did a trim, romantic film in which he delayed the meeting of his lovers until the end, showing how their lives paralleled and even brushed against each other for years. In The Good and the Bad he is after larger game. As the title implies, he is meditating on morality this time, a subject not entirely suited to in temperament. Lelouch fecklessly insists on making a film that weirdly has the tone--most of the time--of a light entertainment.

Here the distant antagonists are a crook (Jacques Dutronc), working his way up from the small time in pre-World War II France, and a cop (Bruno Cremer), who is working his way up in the police bureaucracy. The film dawdles perhaps too long over their early struggles for advancement. On the other hand, both are established as men of some decency in their private lives--a point to be borne in mind once Lelouch finally arrives at the heart of his film, namely the war years.

The cop goes to work for the Vichy government, under the impression that even if the new order is in power, the old criminal order will still be up to its traditional tricks--and in need of pursuit. He does not seem to notice that his new masters have unconscionably broadened the definition of criminal. Meanwhile, back in the underworld, Occupation spells opportunity for Dutronc and his pals--until his common-law wife (Marlene Robert) is captured and tortured by Cremer. The detective's wife (Brigitte Fossey) is, in turn, taken hostage by the criminals and threatened with whatever fate is visited on the cop's captive.

This is the film's turning point. The detective's wife falls for her captor, and after prisoners have been exchanged, she betrays her husband's anti-Resistance strategy to him. Jacques then makes a for mal alliance with the Resistance. At war's end both lawbreaker and law enforcer end up with medals--not entirely deserved especially by the latter.

The film has an interesting story to tell and some nice, if familiar, points to make about how circumstances can change, and change again, our definitions of who is good, who is bad. And there is something admirable about Lelouch's refusal to overdramatize the moral questions that he is examining. Yet in the end this hurts the film dramatically. There really is more here than meets the eye of this light-minded romantic, with his strongly developed taste for period decor and graceful camerawork. One may be a trifle tired of films and books that pore over the sorrow and the pity of how people behaved during the German Occupation. But we are probably not yet ready for something that too often verges on the bouncy in dealing with an inescapably tragic era. There are good performances and affecting moments in this movie, but it is deaf to the basic tone of its historic moment.

--Richard Schickel

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.