Le Voleur (1967)
Directed by Louis Malle

Film Review

Buoyed up no doubt by the spectacular success of his raunchy comedy Viva Maria! (1965), Louis Malle immediately threw himself into another lavish period piece, an adaptation of Georges Darien's well-known 1897 novel Le Voleur.  Despite its impressive production values and stellar cast - headed by rising star Jean-Paul Belmondo - the film failed to enthuse either audiences or critics and was only a moderate success, attracting a modest audience of 1.3 million (barely more than a third of what Malle's previous film had achieved).  For many years after its release, Le Voleur had a reputation as one of the director's lesser accomplishments, a film scarcely worth mentioning in the same breath as Le Feu follet (1963) and Au revoir, les enfants (1987), but recently it has gained in stature and has come to be regarded in a far more positive light.

It is easy to see why Malle was minded to adapt Darien's novel.  Like the central character in the novel, Georges Randal, and also the writer himself (Darien was overtly anarchistic in his views), Malle was a member of the bourgeois establishment who spent his entire adult life rebelling against the bourgeoisie.  In films such as Les Amants and Le Feu follet, the director delivered scathing assaults on the hypocrisy and vacuity of the class into which he had been born and in which he would forever be ill at ease.  Georges Randal and Louis Malle are kindred spirits - both engaged on a solitary personal crusade against bourgeois conservatism, the motivation being not financial gain but the satisfaction of hitting out at the parasitic stratum of society that exists only by virtue of the power it has through its dubiously acquired wealth.  It's probably no accident that on Le Voleur Malle had as his assistant and co-screenwriter Juan Luis Buñuel and Jean-Claude Carrière respectively, two of Luis Buñuel's frequent collaborators.  Buñuel senior spent most of his career attacking the bourgeoisie, so he no doubt had a willing disciple in Louis Malle.

Handsomely photographed by Henri Decae, Le Voleur is one of Malle's most sumptuous looking films, and with authentic sets and costumes to match it was a big budget production which the director helms with his customary precision and skill.  Typical of Malle, there is a tangible feeling of detachment which prevents us from identifying too closely with his protagonist and which allows us to see him not as a conventional hero, but as the inevitable cancer of a completely sick society.  In a memorable scene near the end of the film, Randal coldly redrafts his dying uncle's will, in sight and sound of the man as he lies incapacitated on his death bed.  It is a fitting but cruel retribution for an individual who encapsulates all that is wrong with the bourgeoisie, the class that uses money for its own ends, heedless of the misery this may bring to others.  By redirecting his uncle's wealth to the one who deserves it, Randal is both a Robin Hood and an advocate of social justice, although the fact that he acts alone, as an outlaw hunted by the police, means inevitably that his lone crusade is a futile one.

In a star-studded cast, one of the finest Malle was able to assemble, Belmondo impresses with a far more nuanced and introspective performance than he would become known for in the following decade.  A great fan of Darien's novel, Belmondo succeeds in suppressing his own over-powering personality and instead he gives what may be termed a character performance, one of comparable quality to his subsequent leading turn in Alain Resnais's Stavisky (1974). Julien Guiomar is no less impressive as Belmondo's chief partner in crime, and it is hard to fault the contributions from the stunning exhibition of female pulchritude supplied by Marie Dubois, Geneviève Bujold, Françoise Fabian, Marlène Jobert and Bernadette Lafont.

Since it excels in so many areas and make such a compelling piece of drama it is hard to fathom just why Le Voleur failed to make the impression it should have done on its original release.  This failure is even more surprising when you consider that the film was very much in sympathy with the anti-establishment mood of the time, a mood that would manifest itself spectacularly in the widespread uprisings that hit France the following year and brought the country to the brink of anarchy, in that momentous spring of 1968.

Film Synopsis

In late 19th century France, Georges Randal devotes himself to robbing the bourgeois rich whom he has grown to despise.  He is motivated not by greed but by the satisfaction of punishing those he regards as social parasites.  In the course of one of his robberies, he recalls his past and the unhappy circumstances that led him to pursue a career in crime.  It all began when he was a young orphan, placed in the care of an uncle who robbed him of his entire fortune and thwarted his dreams of marrying his cousin Charlotte.  It was to prevent Charlotte's marriage to another man that Georges stole a small fortune in jewels from her prospective in-laws, impoverishing them in the process.

Not long afterwards, Georges comes into contact with a crooked priest, La Margelle, who invites him to go into partnership with him and another man, Roger-La-Honte.  For a while, the three men profit from their nefarious association, but for every easy victory there is a narrow escape.  Through his criminal exploits Georges gets to meet the notorious crook and political agitator Cannonier, who invites him to assist him in his campaign of terror against bourgeois society.  Cannonier's brutal death at the hands of the police galvanises Georges and makes him more determined than ever to continue in his own personal vendetta against the self-serving rich...