The Fire Within: Pale Fire
By May 12, 2008
If ever an actor could reconcile his natural-born swagger with a kind of pervasive lethargy it was Maurice Ronet. This gave him a distinctive presence in the French cinema for more than twenty Read more »
SYNOPSIS: After garnering international acclaim for such seminal crowd-pleasers as The Lovers and Zazie dans le métro, Louis Malle gave his fans a shock with The Fire Within (Le feu follet_), a penetrating study of individual and social inertia. Maurice Ronet (_Elevator to the Gallows), in an implosive, haunted performance, plays Alain Leroy, a self-destructive writer who resolves to kill himself and spends the next twenty-four hours trying to reconnect with a host of wayward friends. Unsparing in its portrait of Alain’s inner turmoil and shot with remarkable clarity, The Fire Within is one of Malle’s darkest and most personal films.
| Alain Leroy | Maurice Ronet |
| Lydia | Léna Skerla |
| Jeanne | Jeanne Moreau |
| Ms. Farnoux | Yvonne Clech |
| d’Averseau | Hubert Deschamps |
| Dr. La Barbinais | Jean-Paul Moulinot |
| Mrs. La Barbinais | Mona Dol |
| Moraire | Pierre Moncorbier |
| Charlie | René Dupuis / Dupuy |
| Milou | Bernard Tiphaine |
| Duborg | Bernard Noel |
| Fanny | Ursula Kubler |
| Solange | Alexandra Stewart |
| Cyrille Lavaud | Jacques Sereys |
| Brancion | Tony Taffin |
| Director | Louis Malle |
| Producer | Alain Queffelean |
| Screenplay | Louis Malle |
| Based on a novel by | Pierre Drieu la Rochelle |
| Cinematography | Ghislain Cloquet |
| Editing | Suzanne Baron |
| Sound | Guy Villette |
| Collaborating director | Philippe Colin |
| Assistant director | Volker Schlöndorff |
By May 12, 2008
If ever an actor could reconcile his natural-born swagger with a kind of pervasive lethargy it was Maurice Ronet. This gave him a distinctive presence in the French cinema for more than twenty Read more »
By May 12, 2008
When he shot The Fire Within in the spring of 1963, Louis Malle had already established a strong reputation. Incredibly precocious, he won a Palme d’Or at the age of twenty-four, at the Read more »