Les Fanatiques (1957)
Directed by Alex Joffé

Film Review

If Alex Joffé is remembered today it is for the series of popular films (mostly comedies) that he made with Bourvil at the height of his popularity - engaging crowdpleasers such as Les Hussards (1955), Fortunat (1960) and Le Tracassin (1961).  Joffé's non-Bourvil films are mostly forgotten although two - Les Assassins du dimanche (1956) and Les Fanatiques (1957) - definitely deserve a reappraisal, both being fairly respectable entries in the suspense-thriller line.  Les Fanatiques is of particular interest as it is one of the earliest examples of what came to be known as the disaster movie.  Despite its modest budget, it surpasses Airport (1970) and its sequels both in the tautness of its narrative and the originality of its mise-en-scène.  The film's other innovation is that the action takes place in real time, something that can only add to its dramatic impact and tension.

Joffé was rarely the most inspired of film directors but the constraints imposed him by Les Fanatiques (particularly the fact that the second half of the film is confined entirely to the cramped interior of a small airliner) certainly fired his creativity and his work here is arguably his best.  Assisted by one of French cinema's legendary cinematographers, Léonce-Henri Burel (whose credits include Abel Gance's Napoléon and Robert Bresson's Procès de Jeanne d'Arc), Joffé delivers one of the most absorbing French thrillers of the decade - and it's hard to believe that Alfred Hitchcock had no hand in it.

After a somewhat superfluous prologue depicting a chaotic revolution in some South American country, the film gets off to a cracking start with a private duel between two revolutionaries intent on assassinating their country's military dictator (Grégoire Aslan).  Right from the outset Pierre Fresnay and Michel Auclair are presented as moral opposites, Fresnay a true fanatic who has no qualms about killing innocent people to achieve a political outcome, Auclair a more moderate kind of activist cursed with a conscience and respect for human life.  In this first act, the suspense derives from Fresnay's constantly thwarted attempts to smuggle a typewriter fitted with a powerful explosive device onto a commercial aeroplane.  It's black comedy à la Hitchcock, with the gods clearly siding with Auclair and having no end of fun at Fresnay's expense.  With no option left open to him, Fresnay ends up having to board the airliner himself, with his deadly item of luggage set to explode in just thirty minutes' time.  This is where the film begins proper and what ensues is half an hour of almost unbearable tension that builds to a spectacular nail-biting climax.

Compelling as ever in one of his last films, Pierre Fresnay does a superb job of revealing the inner moral conflict that starts to nibble away at his character's resolve when he wakes up to the consequences of his terrorist act.  As the characters are not particularly well drawn the main thing that prevents Les Fanatiques from being a routine thriller is Fresnay's gripping performance, which, matching his character's moral progression, manages to span the dramatic range, starting out chilling and darkly humorous and ending up startlingly humane.  In a few scenes, Fresnay does tend to overplay the sinister card, slightly over-emphasising the film's comedic undertones.  Today, it seems hardly credible that such a suspicious-looking individual could get anywhere near an airliner, let alone smuggle a bomb (and gun) on board, but back in the 1950s airline security was lax to the point of being virtually non-existent.  Les Fanatiques isn't just a highly entertaining thriller, it also makes a grim cautionary satire, one that delights in mocking the complacency of an industry that had yet to wake up to the threat posed by terrorists.  Pity it had to take more than forty years before the airlines got the message...

Film Synopsis

When he learns that a revolution has broken out in his own country whilst he is away in France, South American dictator Ribera decides to return home in a private plane, accompanied by his wife and some security guards.  Even though all of the usual security precautions are taken, two men at the airport manage to conceal a bomb on Ribera's plane.  One of these is the revolutionary Luis Vargas; the other is his friend, an airport manager named Diego.  While Vargas is waiting for Ribera's departure, Diego gets a message from the revolutionary group that Ribera has changed his mind at the last minute.  Instead of his original plan, he now intends to take a flight to Italy which leaves in 45 minutes.  When Diego breaks the bad news to Vargas he is surprised that the revolutionary still intends to murder Ribera.  Vargas takes the bomb from Ribera's plane and puts it into a suitcase that he intends taking on board the flight to Italy.  He has no thought for his own life, nor for the lives of the fifty other passengers on the same flight...