Film Review
With the moral and financial support of his friend and mentor Louis
Malle, director Alain Cavalier made his feature debut with a film which, whilst
all too easily overlooked nowadays, offers a sobering
reflection of France's political travails in the late 1950s, early 1960s. The
collapse of the Fourth Republic in 1958, brought about partly by lack
of political will to resolve the Algerian crisis, had allowed Charles
de Gaulle to re-take the presidency (with the backing of the French military)
and lay the foundation for the Fifth
Republic. At the outset, De Gaulle's left-leaning opponents were suspicious
of his connections with the military and feared that France may be
on the brink of surrendering its democratic principles for short-term
political necessity.
Le Combat dans l'île can,
arguably, be interpreted as an expression of such concerns. The fact
that the film's release was delayed for a year by the government censor
suggests there may have been something in this.
It is interesting that in his next film,
L'Insoumis
(1964), Cavalier showed no qualms over expressing his revulsion for the
Algerian war and his contempt for the political class that had had a
hand in this drawn-out national disaster.
Le Combat dans l'île is, by
contrast, a far more cautious work, a tentative allegory rather than a
front-frontal assault against the De Gaulle presidency.
The climactic duel in the film can be seen as a metaphor for the struggle
that was taking place on France's political stage in the early 1960s,
the struggle between true democracy, flawed and inefficient as it may
be, and a kind of rightwing fanaticism 'to get things done' at any
price.
That Alain Cavalier was heavily influenced by his Nouvelle Vague
contemporaries is obvious in his first feature, both in its visual
style and its subject matter. Like Godard and Truffaut before
him, Cavalier pays homage to classic American film noir, employing many
of the old film noir motifs, appropriately for a film in which honour
and betrayal play a central part. In true New Wave fashion, the
film waltzes vertiginously, almost drunkenly, between ill-fitting
genres, disguising its deeper political messages behind various veils
and screens which try, somewhat unconvincingly, to delude the spectator
into thinking this is just another B-movie
thriller-cum-melodrama. Whilst
Le
Combat dans l'île can certainly be enjoyed as a
run-of-the-mill thriller, it is clear that it has a much darker purpose
and surprisingly, for a film that was intended as a commentary on
French politics in the early 1960s, it continues to have a powerful
resonance. The most cursory glance at today's news headlines is
enough to remind us that democracy is not something we can ever take
for granted - it is a fragile thing that must be protected at all times
from the dark, corrupting influences that would so dearly like to take
its name.
The main joy of
Le Combat dans
l'île is its flawless casting of the three main
characters, all of whom should be instantly recognisable to any French
film aficionado. Headlining the film is the beautiful Romy
Schneider, a well-known Austrian actress who had found national
celebrity a few years earlier in the
Sissi films, a series of
historical romances about the early life of the Empress Elisabeth of
Austria. Having grown tired of Sissi, Schneider was determined to
put the role behind her by relaunching her career in France. She
made her French film debut in Robert Siodmak's
Katia (1959) and then had a notable
supporting role in Orson Welles'
Le Procès (a.k.a.
The Trial) (1962). Between
these two films, Schneider lent her considerable talents to Alain
Cavalier's first film, starring alongside two other formidable
up-and-coming actors, Jean-Louis Trintignant and Henri Serre.
Trintignant had first come to prominence a few years earlier, playing
the male lead opposite Brigitte Bardot in Roger Vadim's groundbreaking
Et Dieu... créa la femme
(1956). The maelstrom of publicity that this film whipped up was
more than Trintignant, a modest and unassuming man, could tolerate, and
his military service provided a welcome escape from the gaze of
sensation-seeking journalists. On his return to civilian
life a few years later, badly shaken by his experiences of active
service in Algeria, Trintignant made a hasty return to acting, and by
the time he appeared in
Le Combat
dans l'île he was pretty well established as one of the
most promising young things in French cinema. The role
Trintignant plays in this film is somewhat atypical - a psychotic tough
guy who does not flinch from hitting women and shooting dead his best
friends - but it seems to suit him perfectly, the cool sadistic veneer
barely concealing a weak man who is being slowly eaten away by his
insecurity and paranoid obsessions. Eight years later,
Trintignant would effectively reprise the role for director Bernardo
Bertolucci in
Il Conformista
(1970), one of his career highpoints.
Suitably cast as Trintignant's nemesis is Henri Serre, an actor who
could not be more different. Serre had only recently found
national and international fame through his leading role in
François Truffaut's
Jules et Jim (1962) - and
tumbled into virtual obscurity just a few years later.
Le Combat dans l'île gave
Serre one of his most substantial film roles, one that is not too far
removed from the one he had played so superbly in
Jules et Jim. Serre's
engaging persona, towering physique and sustained air of insouciance make
an effective contrast with Trintignant's diminutive stature and pent-up
antagonism, although both actors bring so many layers to their
performances that they each arouse our interest and our sympathy.
Serre's character would appear to be the conventional hero, but his
reasoned, pacifistic standpoint is soon shown to be shallow and
hypocritical, whilst Trintignant's character at least has the virtue of
being consistent and based on an unshakable moral conviction, albeit
one that is deeply flawed. Together, Schneider, Trintignant, and
Serre form an unbeatable triumvirate of talent that makes
Le Combat dans l'île a
compelling and deeply unsettling study in those familiar themes of
love, loyalty and betrayal. Like so much of Cavalier's work, this
is a film that is badly in need of a fresh reappraisal.
© James Travers 2000
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Next Alain Cavalier film:
L'Insoumis (1964)