The Childhood of a Leader

It's sort of about the birth of a megalomaniac

The Childhood of a Leader is a loose adaptation of Jean-Paul Sartre's short story The Childhood of a Leader and John Fowles's novel The Magus (plagiarizing Wikipedia). Sadly, I have read the Sartre’s story long time ago and I haven’t read the Fowles’s novel. Nevertheless, in my opinion, the film draws inspiration from another famous book.

In 1931, an Italian journalist and writer Curzio Malaparte wrote Coup D'etat: The Technique of revolution. Near the end of the book, the author wrote about dark, psychic and sexual nature of dictatorship. The author also noted the main traits of dictators – envy. Curzio Malaparte stated that dictatorship is not merely the form of rule, but also the most complete intellectual, political and moral manifestation of the envy.

The Childhood of a Leader portrays the formation of a dictator. You should also note, that Malaparte has written that dictators have a strong feminine side. This thesis is illustrated by distortion of Prescott’s gender identification – he wears a dress and has long hairs. Also, Prescott suffers from enuresis, which is the part of the Macdonald triad.

The psychoanalysis claims that the person is formed by interaction with parents. First of all, the film drops hints about illegitimacy of Prescott. The parents of Prescott are portrayed as cold and indifferent persons, who are more interested in themselves, than in their son. Even the first minutes portrays Prescott as a «strange child» (to put it mildly).

The director narrates the storyline as three caprices. If the first caprice (throwing of stones in the church) looks as an innocent childish prank, the second and third caprice vividly portrays the dark inner world of Prescott. The picture of the film is also very gloomy – the devastated French village, poor houses and old maids.

The not-so-good reviews and synopsizes claims that formation of Prescott was dictated by witnessing his father in drafting the Versailles accord. But I think that it is a product of not-so-attentive watching. In my opinion, the director used a classical trick – contrast. The director portrays how at the seemingly triumphant time for the democracy grows a beast, who will demolish democracy once and for all.

Watch this film and maybe you will not laugh, when you will read that «1 in 5 CEOs are psychopaths».