Zazie Dans Le Métro

After rising to international stardom with such seminal crowd-pleasers as <i>The Lovers</i> and <i>Zazie dans le metro</i>, Louis Malle gave his fans a shock with <i>The Fire Within (Le feu follet)</i>, a penetrating study of individual and social inertia. Maurice Ronet (<i>Elevator To The Gallows</i>), 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, <i>The Fire Within</i> is one of Malle's darkest and most personal films.