The Fire Within (The Criterion Collection)

After garnering international acclaim for such seminal crowd-pleasers as The Lovers and Zazie dans le métro, Louis Malle gave his fans a shock with The Fire Within (Le feu follet), a penetrating study of individual and social inertia. Maurice Ronet (Elevator to the Gallows), 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, The Fire Within is one of Malle's darkest and most personal films.

Special Features
* - New, restored high-definition digital transfer
* - Archival interviews with director Louis Malle and actor Maurice Ronet
* - Malle's Fire Within, a new video program featuring interviews with actor Alexandra Stewart and filmmakers Philippe Collin and Volker Schlöndorff
* - Jusqu'au 23 Juillet, a 2005 documentary short about the film and its source novel Le feu follet, by Pierre Drieu la Rochelle, featuring actor Mathieu Amalric, writer Didier Daeninckx, and Cannes festival curator Pierre-Henri Deleau
* - New and improved English subtitle translation
* - PLUS: A booklet featuring new essays by critic Michel Ciment and film historian Peter Cowie