Lacombe Lucien

Screenplay by Louis Malle and Patrick Modiano, adapted by Peter Joucla

2003-2004 season

In 2003 Tour De Force toured a new French adaptation of Louis Malle's classic film Lacombe Lucien. The production toured large scale venues in Germany and Austria for eight weeks and was well received and reviewed. The screenplay was adapted by the director Peter Joucla for a cast of five actors.

Lacombe works as an orderly in a nursing home for elderly in a small town. Revisiting his native village on a limestone plateau south of the river lot, he finds out that his mother, whose husband is a prisoner of war in Germany, is living with the landlord and that the family farm has been let to strangers.

Lucien takes some dead rabbits to the local schoolmaster, Peyssac, and asks if he can join the Resistance. He is rejected, but cycling back to town he has a puncture and, being out after curfew, he is arrested outside a hotel used as the headquarters by French auxiliaries assisting the occupying forces and the Gestapo.

They treat him in a friendly manner and after being plied with drink he talks about his village. The following day, Peyssac, the schoolmaster, is arrested and tortured.

Lucien remains at the hotel, and falls under the influence of the attractive collaborators : Aubert, a former cycling champion, Jean-Bernard de Voison, a handsome dandy from an aristocratic family, and Jean-Bernard's mistress Betty Beaulieu, a one-time movie actress. He becomes a fellow collaborator, acquires a gun and is taken by Jean-Bernard to get a suit made by Albert Horn, a famous Jewish tailor from Paris who's hiding out in the town with his twenty-year-old daughter France and his elderly mother.

As Lucien gets deeper and deeper into nefarious Militia activities against the Underground, he pursues an initially unenthusiastic France. But after taking her to a dance at the hotel, where she is subjected to anti-Semitic insults, Lucien becomes her lover and moves into the Horn household.

As the Allied forces move south, the Resistance becomes increasingly bold, and Jean-Bernard and Betty are killed. Lucien's mother, who has been receiving anonymous threats, urges her son to flee, but he says he likes it where he is.

Horn, however, can no longer stomach Lucien's presence, delivers himself up to the vicious anti-Semitic collaborator Faure and is taken away by the Germans. Subsequently Lucien comes with a German NCO to arrest France and her grandmother. On the spur of the moment as they leave the house, he kills the soldier and spirits the two women away into the countryside.

After their car breaks down, they take refuge in a deserted farm and begin to live an idyllic rural life with Lucien trapping animals and shooting birds to feed them. A final caption appears over his face one hot summer day "Lucien Lacombe was arrested on 12 October 1944. Tried by a military court of the Resistance, he was sentenced to death and executed".

En Français

Suite à notre succès de l´année dernière, avec l'adaption du film Au Revoir les enfants, la compagnie de théâtre Tour de Force vous présente une deuxiéme pièce adaptée d´un film de Louis Malle.

Nous sommes en juin 1944, dans une petite préfecture du Sud-Ouest. Lucien Lacombe, uns fils de paysans refusé par la résistance, se retrouve dans le locaux des auxiliaires français de la police allemande. Le juene homme jouit du pouvoir qui lui est dorénavant conféré. Il recontre Albert Horn, un tailleur juif caché dans la région. Lucien profite de son autorité pour s´installer chez lui et séduire sa fille dont les sentiments et les réactions demeurent ambiguës. Horn va finalement se livrer lui-même à Gestapo, sans que Lucien puisse l´en empêcher. Un concours de circonstances amène Lucien à sauver la fille, alors même qu´il s´apprêtait à l´emmener lors d´une rafle. Les deux s´enfuient et s´installent dans une ferme abandonée, mais ce n´est pas la fin de la guerre pour Lucien. Lacombe Lucien est une histoire qui raconte la violence, la patriotisme et l´amour dans un pays divisé sous l´occupation.

Auf Deutsch

Nach dem großen Publikumserfolg der Bühnenfassung des Filmes Auf Wiedersehen, Kinder von Louis Malle , arbeitet das TOUR DE FORCE THEATRE nun an der Bühnenversion von Lacombe , Lucien eines weiteren Filmes von Louis Malle . Thema ist hierin ebenfalls die Psychologie der Franzosen während der Zeit der deutschen Besatzung zu erforschen.

1944 in Südwestfrankreich gerät Lucien , ein unbebildeter Junge vom Land , durch Zufall unter den Einfluß der örtlichen Faschisten und wird schließlich Mitglied der Vichy -Polizei der Gestapo . Während er stumm mit der Grausamkeit seines Nazi - Mentors konform geht , führt die Begegnung mit einem jüdischen Schneider dazu ,dass er sich in dessen schöne Tochter verliebt.

Patriotismus , Kollaboration und die Banalität des Bösen sind einige der vielen Themen unserer neuen und spanenden Bühnenproduktion . Das TOUR DE FORCE THEATRE , hat sich den Ruf höchst originellen , anschaulichen Theaterschaffens , das mit einem starken musikalischen Element verbunden ist , erworben . Lacombe , Lucien wird sein Publikum nicht enttäuschen und ist ein idealer Nachfolger von Auf Wiedersehen Kinder.

The Cast