The Fire Within: Day of the Dead
by May 12, 2008When 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 . . .
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.
Cast
| 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 |
Credits
| 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 |
Disc Features
- New, restored high-definition digital transfer
- Archival interviews with director Louis Malle and actor Maurice Ronet
- Malle’s Fire Within, a new video program featuring interviews with actor Alexandra Stewart and filmmakers Philippe Collin and Volker Schlöndorff
- Jusqu’au 23 Juillet, a 2005 documentary short about the film and its source novel Le feu follet, by Pierre Drieu la Rochelle, featuring actor Mathieu Amalric, writer Didier Daeninckx, and Cannes festival curator Pierre-Henri Deleau
- New and improved English subtitle translation
- PLUS: A booklet featuring new essays by critic Michel Ciment and film historian Peter Cowie
From the Current
The Fire Within: Pale Fire
by May 12, 2008If 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 years . . .
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