Brilliant, perceptive account of opportunist French peasant Lacombe who joins the Gestapo during the Nazi Occupation – after setting out to join the Resistance – and falls in love with a Jewish tailor’s daughter. As the lead character, newcomer Blaise is superb as the teenage country boy who can respond to events with a mixture of innocence, apathy and animal shrewdness. Without ever mentioning the subject of innocence and guilt, this extraordinary film, in its calm dispassionate way, addresses it on a very deep level.