The Ogre

Abel Tiffauges is a mechanic in France, a man living with a child's mind, devoted to children and to animals. He is falsely accused of a crime; just then the war breaks out and he is called up. He is taken prisoner soon after and brought to East Prussia. There he is taken into a Nazi elite school set up in a castle, and his job becomes collecting boys for it from the villages. He believes he is doing them good. In the end Soviet troops reach the castle. Volker Schlöndorff directs, adapting Michel Tournier's novel, which he wrote for the screen with Jean-Claude Carrière. John Malkovich plays Abel. What the film is about is how innocence gets used.