The Fire Within

Alain Leroy leaves a clinic in Versailles and comes to Paris. He has stopped drinking and has found no reason to live. Over one day he goes round his old friends: Dubourg, who now has a family, Eva the artist, and the wealthy Cyrille and Solange. Everyone tries to please him and not one encounter holds. Louis Malle directed. Maurice Ronet plays Alain. The source is Pierre Drieu La Rochelle's 1931 novel. The music is drawn from Erik Satie's compositions, played by the pianist Claude Helffer. That choice sets the tone: the same few pieces return from scene to scene. Ghislain Cloquet photographed Paris and Versailles in black and white. It won the Grand Jury Prize at the 24th Venice International Film Festival. Leonard Maltin called it probably Malle's best early film and Roger Ebert called it a triumph of style, both giving three and a half stars out of four. Its trace runs through later cinema. Wes Anderson has said he drew on it for The Royal Tenenbaums, and Joachim Trier's Oslo, August 31st comes directly from it. Who it is for: viewers who like depression conveyed through looking rather than voiceover. Who it is not for: anyone looking for hope, or anyone for whom suicide is difficult ground. The film knows its ending from the first minute and offers the viewer no other possibility.