THE FIRE WITHIN Movie Review

Le Feu Follet
Fuoco Fatuo

Louis Malle's great 1964 film (his fourth feature) is a compassionate but scrupulously unsentimental account of the final 48 hours in the life of a man determined to commit suicide. Though contemporary in setting, The Fire Within is based on a 1931 novel called Le Feu follet (the film's French title) by Pierre Drieu Le Rochelle, who himself committed suicide in 1945 after being accused of collaboration with the Nazis. Malle's film version is the story of a wealthy and emotionally exhausted man, Alain (Maurice Ronet), whose lifestyle might have at one time caused him to be called a playboy. Alain is also an alcoholic, and upon being released from a clinic where he is being treated, he visits a number of old friends and acquaintances, hoping to find a single reason to continue his increasingly difficult struggle to keep living. He cannot find one. Alain's story is told in myriad small details that add up over the course of the movie's two hours to a remarkably intimate portrait of someone who—in the traditional sense—we don't really know at all. Malle was apparently going through a personal crisis of his own during the preparation and filming of The Fire Within, and if the film was an act of therapy, so be it. It is also an extraordinary achievement in its own right, a clear-eyed, unblinking look at an intelligent, tormented individual who is tired of wrestling with the demons within him, and who simply decides to declare that the match is over. With Jeanne Moreau and Alexandra Stewart.

NEXT STOP … Mouchette, Drunks, Affliction

1964 104m/B FR Bernard Noel, Jeanne Moreau, Alexandra Stewart, Henri Serre, Maurice Ronet, Lena Skerla, Yvonne Clech, Hubert Deschamps, Jean-Paul Moulinot; D: Louis Malle; W: Louis Malle; C: Ghislan Cloquet; M: Erik Satie. VHS NYF, PMS