A spellbinding account of the last 48 hours in the life of alcoholic playboy, heading relentlessly towards suicide. This classic early work by Louis Malle follows Alain (Maurice Ronet, in an implosive, haunted performance) – a self-destructive writer – as he endeavours to re-enter his life after undergoing treatment for alcoholism.

Alain’s estranged American wife in New York has paid for a cure at a clinic in Versailles and sends an emissary, one of the many women he has known, to see how Alain is. She sees only the surface, as does his doctor, who deems Alain cured and allows him to leave. He travels to Paris where he lunches with old friends, enjoys a rendezvous in a café, gets drunk and makes a fool of himself at a dinner party, and moves relentlessly towards his own destruction.

Alain''s various encounters do not make him retreat within himself or behave in a contrary fashion. He appears to be relaxed and decidedly normal when compared to the bickering men at the asylum, or the neurotic woman who always notices when he sleeps elsewhere. He doesn''t put out disturbed vibes and his dealings with people are always reasonable. He shows no outward irritation when people greet him, congratulate him on his return from an alcoholic cure, and then automatically serve him drinks. Yet there is a grim logic to the story’s movement towards its inevitable conclusion.

After garnering international acclaim for such seminal crowd-pleasers as The Lovers (Les Amants, 1958) and Zazie In The Subway (Zazie Dans Le Métro, 1960) Louis Malle gave his fans a shock with this penetrating study of individual and social inertia. 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. Although this was his fifth feature film, he regarded it as the first with which he was completely happy. The film won the Italian Film Critics’ Award for Best Film as well as the Special Jury Prize at the Venice International Film Festival in 1963.