The Fire Within

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.

France
1963
108 minutes
Black & White
1.66:1
French
Spine #430

Special 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: New essays by critic Michel Ciment and film historian Peter Cowie

New cover by Rodrigo Corral

DVD 1 Disc Currently Unavailable SRP: $29.95

Special 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: New essays by critic Michel Ciment and film historian Peter Cowie

New cover by Rodrigo Corral

Cast & Credits

Cast

Maurice Ronet: Alain Leroy
Léna Skerla: Lydia
Jeanne Moreau: Jeanne
Yvonne Clech: Ms. Farnoux
Hubert Deschamps: d’Averseau
Jean-Paul Moulinot: Dr. La Barbinais
Mona Dol: Mrs. La Barbinais
Pierre Moncorbier: Moraire
René Dupuis / Dupuy: Charlie
Bernard Tiphaine: Milou
Bernard Noel: Duborg
Ursula Kubler: Fanny
Alexandra Stewart: Solange
Jacques Sereys: Cyrille Lavaud
Tony Taffin: Brancion

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

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Louis Malle

Writer, Director

Crime dramas, comedies, romances, tragedies, fantasies, documentaries, and, of course, coming-of-age stories—director Louis Malle did it all. This most unpredictable and eclectic of filmmakers enriched cinema over a nearly forty-year career that took him from Jacques Cousteau’s watery depths (his first film was the Cousteau-codirected Oscar winner The Silent World) to the peripheries of the French New Wave (Zazie dans le métro, The Fire Within) to the vanguard of American moviemaking (My Dinner with André). Malle had an intellectually curious nature that led him to approach film from a variety of angles; he was as comfortable making minimalist works like the wordless Humain trop humain and the talky André as phantasmagorical ones like Black Moon. He is probably best known, though, for his deeply personal films about the terrors and confusions of childhood, such as Murmur of the Heart and Au revoir les enfants. Perhaps not as well-known is his parallel career as a master of the nonfiction form—one of his many documentary achievements was the seven-part Phantom India, which would be a stunning career centerpiece for anyone else; for this director, it was simply a fascinating side project. Malle died in 1995, shortly after directing his final film, the typically experimental Vanya on 42nd Street.