Malle's late-career triumph, set during the war, when to be a child was hard, to be a Jewish child, a nightmare waiting to happen. "Reasserts the elegant dreaminess of Malle's most passionate work."-East Bay Express
Against the surf and fading pink surface of Atlantic City, an aging mobster's dreams flourish in this brilliant and offbeat film starring Burt Lancaster and Susan Sarandon.
Tiny Glencoe, MN, is the subject of Malle's unobtrusive but probing look at "Le Middle West" in 1979 and 1985. An essential time capsule of an idiosyncratic America, haunted by post-Vietnam tremors and the ravages of Reagonomics. "A slice of cultural and social history, as well as a fascinating dramatic portrait."-London Film Festival
In 1972, Malle filmed the workers and workings of a Citroën automobile factory and created this real-life counterpart to Chaplin's Modern Times. The film itself is a chain de montage (assembly line) at times as dispassionate as Bresson, at others as comic as Tati.
This travelogue of near-hallucinatory images caused a stir in 1969, offending some with its portrait of India and leaving others dismayed by its willful refusal to impose a storytelling order. "Malle has used his camera to record and witness and it is a revealing, bitter but pulsating insight into Calcutta and India."-Variety
Famous as the ultimate coming-of-age movie, this is so much more, with its lovingly observed picture of French bourgeois life in the 1950s. "An exhilarating film."-Pauline Kael
In Vichy France, a young peasant drifts into the sway of local Nazis, giving support to the idea of the banality of evil. One of Malle's greatest films, "beautifully considered, complex, disquieting."-N.Y. Times
This New Wave film introduced Zazie, a little girl with a foul mouth who runs amok on the streets of Paris-in a nice way. An orgy of outrageous sight gags and visual games, and brilliant art direction by William Klein.
The influence of Malle's mentor Bresson can be seen in this stylish early masterpiece following the last days of a disaffected playboy as he searches Paris society for a reason to live. "A small gem, polished to perfection."-Time Out
A simple premise for a fascinating film: in 1972, Malle and crew observed and talked to Parisians. With short Vive le Tour, a dazzling, intensely physical study of the Tour de France.
The new face of American immigration-Ethiopian, Cambodian, Laotian, Central American-was captured for the first time in Malle's 1986 documentary of his trip across the U.S. "An examination of the contradictory pressures of assimilation and cultural fidelity."-Chicago Reader