Rent The Fire Within (1963)

Photogenic Despair. - The Fire Within review by Steve

Louis Malle’s best picture is a detailed and very compassionate account of the last 24 hours in the life of a depressed alcoholic who traverses his old support network searching for a reason to go on. Maurice Ronet is outstanding as the man who seems to have everything, but is consumed by his emotional sterility.

The script makes further gestures towards the cultural atrophy of the Parisian intellectual set. And the struggle for progressive causes. But this is mainly a precise examination of a psychological and philosophical degeneration. And an inability to find a second act for the causes of youth.

Every possible reason to endure is considered, and rejected. The music of Erik Satie is employed as a kind of wistful refrain for his emptiness. It’s astonishing that Malle makes this futility so compelling. His visual impression of internal despair is extraordinarily potent.

Today, the condition would be classed as a disease, though this isn’t examined. The psychiatrist has no insight. This is a sensitive and artistic, but inevitably challenging experience. The ambience of existential paralysis is so powerful. It’s my pick as the standout film of the French New Wave.