Le Feu follet 1963

Le Feu follet (The Fire Within) is Louis Malle's 1963 film about the last two days of Alain Leroy, a former Parisian playboy who has just been treated for alcoholism in a clinic in Versailles and has decided to end his life. Before he does, he goes to Paris to see his old friends, one after another, as if testing whether anyone can give him a reason to stay. Maurice Ronet plays Alain in the performance of his career, and the soundtrack is made of piano pieces by Erik Satie. The film is based on a 1931 novel by Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, itself inspired by the life of the surrealist poet Jacques Rigaut. It won the Grand Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival. It is a sad film, and also a very beautiful and lucid one.

The clinic

Alain has spent four months at Dr La Barbinais's clinic. He is separated from his American wife, Dorothy, who is in New York. The film opens with a night he spends with Lydia, a friend of his wife, visiting Paris; she tells him he is cured and should come back to New York with her. He refuses.

Back in his room at the clinic, he reads, looks at the newspaper cuttings and objects on his mirror, plays with small things, tries to write and examines his revolver. The doctor tells him he has been well for a while and should think about leaving. Alain has already decided on a date.

Paris, one friend at a time

The second part follows Alain through Paris over a day. He visits Dubourg, an old companion of his wild years who has settled down with a wife and children and studies Egyptology. He sees Eva, a woman from his past played by Jeanne Moreau, in a flat full of artists and drug users. He goes to a dinner where society friends treat him as a curiosity. He meets two former comrades now involved in the political violence of the Algerian War period.

Each meeting shows him a way of living, and he rejects each one, as if every choice had become impossible for him.

Ronet

Ronet had played in Malle's first feature, Ascenseur pour l'échafaud (1958), alongside Jeanne Moreau. Here he is in almost every scene, elegant, ironic, worn out, charming to people even as he pulls away from them. The film never makes Alain a simple victim or an example. It watches him with tenderness and without illusions.

Satie and black and white

Malle chose the first Gymnopédie and several Gnossiennes by Satie, performed by the pianist Claude Helffer. The slow, repetitive music gives the film its mood of suspended time. Ghislain Cloquet's black-and-white photography is clean and grey, full of mirrors and windows.

Drieu La Rochelle

The novel's author, Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, became a notorious collaborator during the Occupation and killed himself in 1945. Malle moved the story from the 1920s to the 1960s and changed Alain's addiction from heroin to alcohol, keeping the core: a man who cannot find his place among adults.

A note before watching

This is a film about suicide, and it does not soften its subject. Some viewers will find it hard going. Those who know Malle only from Au revoir les enfants (1987) will discover here a young director already sure of his style. Joachim Trier's Oslo, 31 August (2011) is a modern adaptation of the same novel.

For other films from the period, see the best French films of the 1960s, with Jules et Jim and Le Mépris.