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One extraordinary feature of this film is what I would call a "filter". Right from the start, the viewer knows that Alain is hurriedly (yet half-heartedly) searching for something that would give him the will to live, otherwise he will commit suicide. This extremely simple premise leads to extraordinary effects: the everyday happenings, which would seem neutral or even pleasant in any other circumstance, now fill us with disgust. Through the filter of Alain's eyes, we perceive the everyday reality as hopeless and empty of any worthwhile purpose. The author's message: you should apply that filter to your own life. But who has the guts to do it? I know I don't.

This is a mesmerising film about suicide as a rational way out. Ronet is wonderful in the role, sweetly sad, boyishly charming, tragically self-aware. His loving, well-meaning friends he visits on the way to the final "checking-out" are an interesting study and their inability to connect with Ronet or perceive where he's heading is poignant. For me, the best Louis Malle ever. The choice of music is great as well.

Wonderful study of the last day in the life of a man. This movie has one specific scene where Alan Leroy (Maurice Ronet), sitting at a cafe in Paris, takes his first alcoholic drink after months of rehabilitation. This scene is complimented by stunning photography of Chislain Cloquet and the haunting music of Eric Satie. Malle captures the true meaning of existentialist philosophy and manages to create a movie that does not wallow in self-pity but instead celebrates our ability to choose whether to live or die.

Le Feu Follet or "Will o'the wisp" as it can be translated into English is one of the most important philosophical films made by the great master of French cinema Louis Malle.It is based on a book written by Pierre Drieu la Rochelle who was influenced by Dadaism. Although this film talks of a difficult albeit dark theme of suicide the film's overall mood is not at all gloomy. This is because there are plenty of scenes infused with day to day humor.The film is about a protagonist who has lost all interest in life.Maurice Ronet,a major French film star of the sixties plays the lead role.He is a sort of celebrity among his circle of socialites and he is fed up of their useless company.The film portrays the last days of a person suffering from a drug habit.In some ways this film is an attack on middle class or French bourgeoisie.Although the protagonist is a part of it,he nevertheless makes vain attempts to untangle himself from it.If a separate genre of suicide films is formed, this film will easily find a proud place in that category.

The Parisian Alain Leroy (Maurice Ronet) has been disintoxicated in a clinic in Versailles from his drinking problem. His estranged wife Dorothy lives in New York and Alain has a brief love affair with her friend Lydia (Léna Skerla), who has to return to the Apple City.

The needy and depressed Alain is declared healed by his doctor, but he has no motivation to continue to live. He travels to Paris and meets his old friends, acquaintances and lovers trying to find a reason to live in a farewell journey.

"Le Feu Follet" is a melancholic and depressive film by Louis Malle about an alcoholic man in existentialist crisis. The theme "alcoholism" has produced important films in the cinema industry, like Billy Wilder's "The Lost Weekend" (1945) or Blake Edwards' "Days of Wine and Roses" (1962). However, in "Le Feu Follet", the story is about the difficulty of reintegration of a former drunkard in the society, specially with his old "friends" that were used to his crazy behavior.

The film has a beautiful and sensitive music score and Maurice Ronet has a magnificent performance. However, the unpleasant story is not entertaining but gloomy. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Trinta Anos Esta Noite" ("Thirty Years This Night")

Beautifully detailed black and white study of a man looking for a reason to go on living and not really finding it. Updates the excellent 1920s novel on which it is based to the 1960s without sacrificing anything of the former's timeless relevance. To give a (very) rough point of reference, it is something of a subdued Left Bank version of "La Dolce Vita", although Malle's film has none of the frantic burlesque episodes of LDV. Rather, the feel of the film is consistently weary and melancholic. Poetic and moving, it's an existentialist classic.

The last days in the life of a disillusioned man are examined with subtle restraint in this Louis Malle film, THE FIRE WITHIN (U.S. title).

MAURICE RONET is the man, one of the great French stars of the '60s. It's a very stark drama from a French novel and it will capture your interest from the beginning. Ronet is a recovering alcoholic at a clinic who toys with the idea of using a gun to end his feelings of "contant anxiety". His life is empty without love or meaningful relationships. "I keep thinking something will happen tomorrow," he tells a doctor. "But what?" You'd think the doctor would notice the suicidal newspaper clippings on his wall next to the mirror, including a huge candid photo of Marilyn Monroe. If anyone was looking carefully for signs, they were there.

Ronet plays the quiet intellectual with understated nuances but is always inside his character. He's in the Laurence Harvey category of sensitive British character actor and is never showy in a role that some might have been tempted to overplay. He has chosen a date on which he intends to end it all and spends the last days of his life saying farewell to friends. The theme was too depressing to have wide audience appeal and the film was a box-office failure for Malle.

Much of the film gets bogged down in too much intellectual discussion relating to Ronet's particular "illness" and nothing is ever resolved in any of these rather empty talks. It's a downbeat story with an ending that is inevitable.

Worthwhile, but not the sort of film you're likely to want to indulge in more than once, too cold and clinical in treatment.

THE FIRE WITHIN chronicles the last chapter in the life of a failed writer who is locked in a struggle with existential despair. Alain Leroy is presently in a hospice undergoing treatment for alcoholism, and he is clearly hung-up on the same dilemma that perplexed Shakespeare's Hamlet-should he continue with his lackluster existence, or end the hopelessness of it all? Always the ladies man, he now feels that he was never able to touch or connect with any of the passions of his nature, and alcohol allowed him a safe haven while he awaited his real life to commence. But, it never did. He spends his last few days visiting with old friends trying to uncover an answer to his problem, but finds no solace in their warmth and encouragement. The film follows the premise to the logical conclusion, but whether we were watching the buildup to a suicide was really not the prime concern of the movie. Malle's film succeeds in that he is able to present a three dimensional character at a significant crossroads in his life. Also, the film contains many wonderful scenes of Paris street life from the early 1960's which further increases the richness of this movie.

I've been trying hard to appreciate this genre of French film. In all honesty, it's hard. It would be easy to write it off as humorless, pretentious nonsense—lines like "I felt with my heart, not with my hands" might have gotten Malle somewhere in at lame party, but they aren't the sort of thing one ever wants to hear in a theater.

The best I can do is interpret the film politically. The main character is intellectual France and his friends are the rich old guard. Intellectual France went on a bender and wasted its youth; in this it was condescended to by a corrupt and smug class of prigs and losers; now intellectual France has lost the will to live, despite its American-financed cure. This seems to suggest the Vichy past as the bender, America as the unwanted wife, and the perpetuation of corruption into the postwar period as the old guard under De Gaulle. It's not necessary to take the film's Existentialism at face value: French intellectuals should feel horrible after collaborating with Nazi occupiers. This isn't some metaphysical conundrum.

Read this way, the film foretells the death of French culture. There's something to this. The Citroën DS was a high point unless you are really into fast trains and breeder reactors and molecular biology, things that shouldn't be overlooked as great French postwar achievements. But with regard to what most people understand as culture, which means the humanities, France went into a hopeless and irreversible slump in the 60s, blow-hards like Goddard and BHL notwithstanding. Ronet is a charismatic actor, but he's got nothing on Depardieu, the half-educated gang-rapist most French found easier to live with than this postwar generation of spoiled and humorless weaklings.

"The Fire Within" (French, 1963): Directed by Louis Malle, scored by Eric Satie. This is a perfect visual reason to use black and white with tons of gray. It is two days in the life of a young, popular man who has returned to his acquaintances, friends and ex-lovers, after vanishing into a program for alcoholics…a program he found comforting, and did NOT want to leave. He searches through his relationships for a reason to continue his life, whether as-is or anew…but overriding any thoughts of the future is his current state of total depression. His friends continued their lives during his absence, they continue their fast-paced, challenging repartee during his visits, and they will clearly continue after his leaving. "The Fire Within" is a quiet, observational film, interrupted only for conversations that seem to have substance, yet offer no solutions. It has one goal, and meets it very well.

A bleak character study of a recovering alcoholic who has lost all hope and decides to kill himself. The film follows him over the course of a couple of days as he wanders about the streets, running into and saying goodbye to former acquaintances. One senses that he's trying out of a last ditch sense of desperation to tease out of these people some hint of how they manage to find things worth living for, but their secrets remain elusive. He carries out his plan, and the film makes the rather unsettling suggestion that some never find anything worth living for.

Not a comforting thought for those who struggle through depressions of their own and look to the positive messages so often found in films to buoy their hopes. But then this movie is not intended to be comforting. It's quiet, lonely, and depressing, but it's also a bit refreshing that director Louis Malle resists a happy resolution and instead stays committed to depicting life the way it actually plays out for some rather than the way the movies would have us believe it does.

Grade: A

for me personally after making this film L. Malle should have quited his profession because it is his number one which comparing to the other his movies is a giant

first time, i saw this film about 10 years ago and was completely excited about but when I grew up I stated that it is so empty, without soul, without life, without anything what could be priceless. the main hero who wants to commit suicide and people around him who are already dead - they live, talk and walk but don't feel don't miss don't hate and don't love. Everything looks like the royal family (aristocracy) which is childless and the only thing which is left is to die!

the film is filled with emptiness but whenever I watch it I want to live just to see movies like this one

This is really one of the best Louis Malle films, and one of the best French films, thanks to the excellent novel, the directing, and the actors, especially Maurice Ronet. He is a real good actor and we can see through him, a really special role. And even if Louis Malle made some extraordinary films like Au revoir les enfants, this one is a masterpiece.

Please see this great film.

THE FIRE WITHIN is a drama about a former alcoholic, who is at the crossroads between life and death in a state of a deep depression. It is based on the novel "Will O' the Wisp" by Pierre Drieu La Rochelle.

Alain, a recovering alcoholic at a rehabilitation clinic in Versailles suffers with a depression. He often thinks about suicide, but still tries to find some valid reasons for living. He is in complete contrast with a behavior of his friends, which further enhances his internal conflict...

Mr. Malle gently touches sore points of a depressed man. His hero is empty and defeated man, who is trapped between a drunken past and an uncertain future. Many of the protagonists, who are full of compassion and love, going through his frustrating life. He's a lost soul, who can not let go of his depressive everyday life. However, a man, without an imagination and love, must find his own peace and certainty. A recovery from alcohol is an ironic view of a collapsed life.

Regardless of a state of his mind and heart, his tragic appearance is not quite clear. This is a kind of flaw of this film, because the main protagonist has condemned himself to a tragic end, before he has considered any options. An authentic scenery emphasizes his escape from any opportunities in life.

Maurice Ronet as Alain Leroy has offered a convincing performance. He is a lonely man who helplessly wanders...search, and then run away from love and certainty.

Life is a kind of agony in this case.

Technically speaking, this is a well made film. The acting, writing and direction are all very good and I have no serious complaints in this regard. However, as the film is a very cold account of a severely depressed man who is contemplating suicide, it is thoroughly unpleasant and should NEVER be seen by anyone who is depressed or has a history of suicide attempts--it might just push them over the edge. So this leads me to wonder WHO the audience is for this film?! The average person will probably find the film too unpleasant and awful to stick with it and depressed people will give up hope if they watch it. About the only people who will enjoy or at least appreciate this film are art film patrons--who often revel at the prospect of watching a film even more depressing and hopeless than the most depressing film made by Ingmar Bergman. I love many so-called "art films", but frankly I disliked this film and never hope to see it again. Life is just too short to watch films like this!! And, unless you are very strange, shouldn't the purpose of films be to be either entertained or to learn and grow as a result of seeing it? This film fails on both counts.

By the way, in many ways this film is quite reminiscent of the recent film LEAVING LAS VEGAS where a character deliberately drinks himself to death over a very short period of time. Following the sale of his book, the writer (John O'Brien) killed himself. So, watch and beware.

Alain Leroy is having a course of treatment in a private hospital because of his problem with alcohol. Although he is constantly distressed, he leaves the hospital and tries to meet good old days' friends. None of them will be helpful, increasing Alain's distress.

Leonard Maltin gives the film 3.5 stars (out of four) and calls it "probably Malle's best early film." Roger Ebert wrote that the film was a "triumph of style." That sums it up nicely. I was going to try to make some comparison to "Los Weekend", but that seems forced. Instead, what stands out for me is how well Malle used the black and white. So many great directors of the 1960s were still working in black and white, and I wish that trend had never died.

My usual rating but this time for a unusual theme. Theme, represented by Kurosawa in a totally different way. I did not understand why here it was presented as a weakness which should be removed with its roots. I do not support it but I do not like dramatizing it.

To be so sensible that you can not feel even one thing. To be burden to yourself. Absence of a straw which can be caught. To hate the presence of order and the order itself. About the snobbery, pomposity, lordliness: which I do not like.

The power to uproot the bed habit with its root. The power of the habit. About that drinking people are most of the times very good persons that can not resist of the invitation of the alcohol. Uncertainty, lack of secure truth. Misunderstanding of one's self. To be already painted drawing which is good only for watching from distance. How humiliating is to be a human.

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It is hard, perhaps even impossible, to say anything good about this film. The plot is poor little rich playboy has lost the will to live. Who cares? Making a film in black and white when you have nothing to say, is a great waste of silver.