The Good and the Bad (1976) User Reviews

It's quite underrated IMO, but give it a half hour to get cooking.

[un_samourai · 8/10 · 19 August 2012]

I'd seen the crime film, "Le Voyou", and aside from the silly opening dance sequence, loved it, so I wanted to see more Claude Lelouch pictures. I found this on a two DVD set with "Viva La Vie" (which is excellent, it is the best of the 5 Lelouch films I've seen. It's very original).

This film may start out as a fairly standard crime film, and it was feeling more OK than great for the first half hour. Once it opens up though, and gets to the time period of the Nazi occupation of France, it's a dead interesting, very good film. Very good acting by all the main players.

Because of the standard beginning, I wouldn't quite rank it along side Malle's 'Lancombe, Lucien', or "Au Revoir Les Enfants", but I could still see it being included in the Criterion Collection's Eclipse series.

and the end is the best!

[michal-2 · 10/10 · 5 August 2005]

I don't understand why nobody has it commented yet because it is a masterpiece! I don't want to write any plot-walk-through so I will tell you about my feelings:

The story about being good and bad in different conditions, times and places. When obeying rules in one situation can be interpreted as the good behavior but in the other not. ....... we see characters which are in fact born to fight against each other because they see the world in completely different ways ........ we see that in some situations being bad or good is split by a very thin border which is very easy to cross in both directions

...and completely different thing is the way people around see us

everything is very well acted and what is very important with high probability this incredible story could happen in the past