Le combat dans l'île

'New Wave, 'Neo-Noir', 'political thriller' or 'romantic melodrama'? Whatever label one choses to attach to this film it represents a highly assured directorial debut by Alain Cavalier. By all accounts it was made 'under the supervision' of Louis Malle although how much influence he exerted and to what extent he contributed is impossible to establish. Cavalier's next film, the brilliant 'L'Insoumi', used as a backdrop the Algerian War of Independence. In the film under review this conflict is neither mentioned nor alluded to but the leading character Clement belongs to an extremist right-wing organisation which one assumes is a reference to the OAS that was formed just one year earlier in an attempt to foil Algerian self-determination. After having failed in an attempt to bump off a left-wing politician Clement realises he has been betrayed and is nominated by other members of his group to track the traitor to South America and kill him. His wife Anne, with whom he has a volatile and rather violent relationship, tells him that if he goes she never wishes to see him again. In his absence she falls in love with and is pregnant by Paul, a lifelong friend of Clement. When Clement returns and hears the news he challenges Paul to a duel........ This was a good phase for Henri Serre who plays Paul as 'Jules et Jim' was released the previous year. He had a minor role in Malle's 'Le Feu Follet' the following year but it is hard to find any film thereafter as effective which is a pity. Jean-Louis Trintignant, one of France's greatest living actors, brings his own air of mystery and unpredictability to the part of Clement. It is not too fanciful I am sure to connect this role with that of the fascist Marcello in Bertolucci's 'Il Conformista' eight years later. The film really belongs to Romy Schneider as Anne. At first she appears to be the passive wife and little more than the obligatory 'love interest' but her character develops strongly and becomes the driving force. Her qualities as an actress are manifold and of course the camera absolutely adores her. The next few years provided nothing comparable but her career was revitalised by 'Les Choses de ma Vie' for Claude Sautet. Excellent script by Cavalier and Jean-Paul Rappeneau with gorgeous, grainy cinematography by the masterful Pierre L'Homme. Cavalier maintains a 'lento' rhythm throughout which allows the characters to breathe whilst never allowing the momentum to slacken. If you liked this, you will love 'L'Insoumi'.

When the children of rich parents make a revolution: Jean-Louis Trintignant and Henri Serre fight for Romy Schneider

Alain Cavalier made a strangely impressive film at the beginning of the 1960s. Anne (GOLDEN GLOBE candidate Romy Schneider) and Clement (FELIX prize winner Jean-Louis Trintignant) are young married, she is a former actress and he is the son of a rich company owner. But Clement doesn't want to follow in Dad's footsteps, preferring to join Serge's (Pierre Asso) right-wing extremist group. Clement will soon carry out his first assassination attempt on an overly left-wing trade union leader. The shot is successful, but Serge has badly betrayed him. Together with Anne, Clement stays with a friend from the Algerian war. This Paul (Henri Serre, known from "Jules and Jim") is in many ways the exact opposite of Clement: newly widowed, owner of a small printing company that trains three apprentices. As Clement chases after the fugitive Serge to South America to finally judge him, Anne and Paul grow closer and closer. When Clement returns after Serge's execution has been completed, only one last confrontation with his rival Paul remains: the fight on the island...

As if Oscar nominee Jean Paul Rappeneau ("Cyrano de Bergerac" and "The Hussar on the Roof" as director) was already anticipating the contrasts of the 1968 era in his script, the conflict between love of peace and radical resistance is fought out here. Of course it's also about Romy, but the argument is much deeper. Both men are familiar with weapons through their service in Algeria, both are dependent on a female hand in the household, so they are still very much caught up in the traditional life of a man. But they made different decisions based on this initial situation. And that makes this film - despite an annoying narrator's voice - still an interesting contemporary document. For Romy Schneider, the film was the breakthrough in French cinema, even though it flopped at the box office. But a film with her can't be bad at all. One of the members of the right-wing terrorist group is played by director Jean Pierre Melville ("Le Samourai").

This first feature film directed by Alain Cavalier is an atmospheric brooder. The plot is not entirely convincing, but the main motivations for making the film seem to have been to explore political extremism, social paranoia, and mood for its own sake. The film was made in the immediate aftermath of the Coup d'Alger of April, 1961, namely the rebellion against de Gaulle's Government headed by General Raoul Salan, the French military chief in Algeria, and his three co-conspirators. The plan was to have included a coup in Paris itself, but that did not come off. France was seriously spooked by this right-wing conspiracy which nearly succeeded. So this film is drenched in the atmosphere of paranoia prevalent at that moment in French society. France has always had its terrorists of all kinds, and the right wing ones have been as sinister as those of the far left. In this film, we see a small group of elegant, rich young bourgeois men who have decided to save their country from communism. At least that's what they think. And like all political extremists, the means always justify the end, so they are free to commit any crime, murder being their favourite. They meet twice a month for weapons and combat training in the countryside, gleefully firing their machine guns at symbolic enemies, with crazed grins on their faces. One of these young men is played by the youthful Jean-Louis Trintignant, a grim, humourless fanatic who beats up his wife. The conspirators at one point sing a Petainist song, and are clearly survivors of the Vichy mentality, only even more extreme. When Trintignant goes to South America, he boasts of having met exiled Germans who were kind to him (get it?) and says that as he moved from city to city, starting in Buenos Aires, he was always fed and given money and new passports by the endless network of sympathisers there. So we get the picture. Trintignant is married to Romy Schneider, who gives a marvellously rounded and inspired performance as a woman who clings to her persecutor and keeps returning to be beaten up again. But eventually she snaps when a baby's life is at stake rather than just her own. When Schneider realizes that her husband has attempted to assassinate a member of the National Assembly (or Senate, it's not clear which) by firing a bazooka at his flat from a rooftop, she does not desert him, a typical behaviour of the willingly enslaved masochistic woman. Despite her obvious psychological disturbance, Schneider is always laughing and exceedingly carefree in her manner, flirting and enjoying herself, so that the performance is really far from one-dimensional. Trintignant's best friend from his youth is a left-wing pacifist printer, played with convincing languor by Henry Serre. When Trintignant and Schneider seek shelter with him at a beautiful old mill deep in the countryside, the psychological complexities multiply. Serre and Schneider eventually become an item while Trintignant is off killing someone. This does not go down well with Trintignant, who simply cannot see the funny side, so he challenges Serre to a duel. Serre thinks this is some kind of joke, but even by now Serre has failed to realize that Trintignant does not joke. Eventually this leads to a life and death struggle on a small river island (a holm), which is what gives this film its original French title, LE COMBAT DANS L'ILE, which means THE FIGHT ON THE ISLAND, though the English language title is FIRE AND ICE, whatever that means. Naturally I cannot say what happens at the end. A sombre and intense mood is sustained throughout this film, so it is really more of a 'mood piece' than a story. But it is a mood piece which evokes a moment in time in France and gives us an insight into the fears which haunted people then. Many of the interiors of buildings in Paris glimpsed in this film are seen to be shabby, still not fixed up since the German Occupation. Indeed, the ghost of the Nazi presence seems still to be there, as the spawn of the Nazis go about their evil work. And we are left wondering about women like the character played by Schneider: what makes them tick? Or is their ticking really that of a time-bomb of self-destruction? This film poses questions of a psychological, moral, and political nature which are uncomfortable and will probably never be resolved as long as there are humans and human societies. There is always a dark side, and here we see some of it up close.

Le Combat dans l'île is a political film (at least in its clothing) about a reactionary, the racist Clément (Jean-Louis Trintignant); his childhood friend Paul (Henri Serre), left-wing printer; and love interest Anne (Romy Schneider).

Clément and Anne are in a rut, she an ex-actress, now a kept woman, he a son of a wealthy industrialist, very serious and eager to kill lefty politicians. She likes to pass herself around, wedding ring or no, he treats her as if she were personal property, they are deserving of one another.

Anne's slatternly behaviour appears to be foreplay for unhealthy sex as Clément physically abuses her and she submits. Trintignant is not really up to the part, not in the mindset of the character, but Schneider really wows. The movie is imbued with an almost unhealthy enthusiasm for her beauty and energy, she pelts the camera with daisies, as it pursues her. That is the soul of the movie, images of Romy Schneider. For more after this fashion see her in L'enfer d'Henri-Georges Clouzot, a documentary containing footage from an extremely ambitious Clouzot production that collapsed as a result of obsession. L'enfer is the concept of fascination with Romy Schneider taken to ruinous extremes.

These early scenes are accompanied by an ominous and weary soundtrack, which was very noirish. I would have been perfectly content for the movie to continue in this manner and end fatalistically, but the film increasingly goes for a political angle. That is to say the movie becomes about Anne's growth and she redeems herself under the wing of Paul.

This second half of the movie is dissatisfying, firstly in that it is quite "on the nose" politically, Clément is shown as being part of a shady international network of fascists holding old grudges, whereas of course Paul lives the simple life. Clément's communist equivalents were just as militant and obscure, but the movie doesn't show this. The element of personal growth here is also not very satisfying, generally in the bildungsroman form you get personal growth being achieved only by painstaking efforts, Anne here is doing little more than changing bedfellows and having a nice stay in the country on Paul's tab.

The action sequence at the end of the film (which the title refers to) is handled with an absolute minimum of suspense and is bizarrely anticlimactic. My own view is that there were conflicting desires from producer and director, Malle wanted to make a political film (a shot across the bow to other directors who supported the French occupation of Algeria), Cavalier is interested in getting as much footage of Schneider as possible. Watch Cavalier's diary film Irène to see how extremely fascinated he is by womanly beauty: "Oh beautiful woman, intelligent and lively, who confirms the planet's faith in the quality of the human race." Filming beautiful and intelligent women like Romy Schneider can become the entire point of a movie and I think Le Combat dans l'île is an example of this. Purists such as myself resent the awkward trappings and pretence in the film that distract from its real nature.

The only weak point of the casting is Romy Schneider who is slightly over-acting. Beautiful B&W camera work and music. Directing work is directly influenced by Robert Bresson (LES DAMES DU BOIS DE BOULOGNE ; UN CONDAMNE A MORT S'EST ECHAPPÉ) & Louis Malle (ASCENSEUR POUR L'ÉCHAFAUD ; LE FEU FOLLET) : distant, "fire under the ice" style, sharp, precise, contained. The story is quite intelligent (an right-wing anti-communist idealist militant betrayed by his chief after a political assassination attempt + love story in which Romy Schneider is torn apart between him and his left-wing childhood friend : they will "fight in the island" to death, using Walther P-38 pistols) and time treatment managed by the editing work is superior art. One of the best movies made in France by the 1960's but it is necessary, when screening it, to not miss one sequence, even a short one, in order to be able to enjoy the subtle atmosphere construction. To be fully understood, this movie requires you to be aware of the political situation of France at that time.