LE FEU FOLLET (A TIME TO LIVE AND A TIME TO DIE, FOXFIRE)

France, 1963, 103 minutes, Black and white.
Maurice Ronet, Jeanne Moreau.
Directed by Louis Malle.

Le Feu Follet (A Time to Live And a Time to Die, Foxfire) is one of the earliest films of French writer-director Louis Malle. Malle was one of the most prominent of the French new wave directors. They brought in an intense style of cinema production, a very strong focus on serious themes, trying to get into the interior life of their characters. There was often a pessimistic tone (Erie Rohmer, Claude Chabrol, Francois Truffaut). This film is very much a new wave film. (As if to indicate that he was a film-maker with varied talent, Malle wrote the zany colourful Zazie in the Metro in 1960).

This film was made in a moody black and white photography, using many interiors and exteriors in Versailles and Paris. The editing is important, the change of pace indicating the variety of moods of the central character and his viewpoint on himself and the characters that he encounters. It indicates an intensity of involvement and a growing detachment leading to suicide.

The film is helped by the use of mood music from Erik Satie, from his Gymnopedies and Gnossiennes. Malle also had the assistance of Volker Schloendorff as assistant director (Schloendorff was to make a range of interesting films including The Lost Honour of Katerina Blum, Circle of Deceit and the version of Proust's In Search of Time Past). Photography is by Ghislain Cloquet, Oscar winner for photography of Tess.

Maurice Ronet who appeared in a number of Malle's films is excellent in the role of the exhausted playboy. There is a range of guest characterisations including Jeanne Moreau and Alexandra Stewart.

1. The impact of the French new wave directors in the '50s and 1960s? In retrospect. Their cinema style? Tone? Content?

2. This film in the canon of Louis Malle? His belonging to the French new wave? His film's of the late '50s and early '60s? The contrast with Zazie Dans Le Metro? His moving to international film-making in the mid-'60s (Viva Maria), his subsequent French and American films? His ability to explore character? visualise human crises?

3. The pessimism of the film? The final comment by Alain: that he could love nobody, that nobody could 1 d love him, that the bonds between himself and others were too loose, that by his death he would tighten them, that by his suicide there would be a stain on his friends forever?

4. Maurice Ronet's appearance as the handsome but exhausted playboy, the burnt-out writer? The hero, anti-hero? The voice-over technique and its invitation to the audience to understand Alain? The comment on his experience? Did it elicit audience sympathy? The importance of the mood of the initial encounter with Lydia? Sexual relationship, loving relationship, distance? Alain and his plight and his wanting support and sympathy?

5. The background of his drinking, experience in America, his marriage with Dorothy? His returning to France for the cure? The effects of his drinking and the 'good life'? His personal style, insights, capacity for writing, his diary and the random entries? The relationship with Dorothy and his estrangement? The contrast of his experience of American lifestyle and French lifestyle?

6. His relationship with the doctor? Chess? His staying or leaving the institution? Being ousted? Was he cured in any way? The patients - Aquinas discussion, desire, eye popper, the staff? The room, decorations? The importance of his cutting out from the paper, the photos of Marilyn Monroe? His eventual return to the institution? Packing, destroying things, a place to die?

7. How inevitable was his death? When did he make his decision? Sufficiently alienated from the world and his friends to die? During his visits was it possible that anyone could save him?

8. The visits and their range, their effect? A kind of purgatory for him? Reliving his own life, his relationships? Aware of what had happened to each of his friends? Their strengths and failures? Sharing their failure? The audience sharing this experience and thus sharing his life? The contrast between what he was and what he might have been?

9. The relationship with Lydia, love, friendship, sexuality? Concern? The betrayal of Dorothy? The lack of love? The coffee and the ending?

10. The beginning of his experience of leaving the institution and the journey towards death? The significance of his refusal to go away with Lydia? His believing that he would make her unhappy? The drive with the truckie?

11. The bar, its staff? Their saying that he was ill? The bartender and his happy attitude? The young run? The phones? Relating or not?

12. His visit to Dubourg? The drinking memories? Dubourg's change - 'mystic'? Egyptology? His relationship with his wife (and her smiling attitudes), his daughters, the atmosphere of his home, bourgeois? The passion for study? Eating, sexuality, security? The convincing nature of his change? Alain's reaction?

13. Jeanne - happy memories, her personality, Jeanne Moreau in this role, her presence, the expressions of her face? Shop? The experience of talking, the warmth? The range of friends? Their withdrawal, art, the drug world, the blurring of sexual differences in relationships? Jeanne having lost herself? The atmosphere of the '60s avant garde?

14. The growing crisis, hostility, deals?

15. His visiting Solange and Cyrille? Society, elegance, dinner parties and guests, bitchiness? His arrival, tiredness, sleeping? His flirting? Anti the drunks? The propositions, the artificial dinner and conversation? The possibility of relating to Solange and her world or not? Cyrille and his wealth, possessiveness, control over Solange? Rivalry to Alain?

16. What rude Alain begin to drink again? The bar, the dinner, collapsing?

17. His sleep, waking on the last morning, the possible help from Solange, hanging up, his finishing the book that he was reading, the telegram to his wife, his packing? The suddenness of his shooting himself?

18. The effect of his death - dramatically, thematically?

19. A portrait of the values emerging in the '60s? Reaction against complacency? Alienation? The blurring of sexual identity? The emerging of drug experimentation? Pseudo avant garde? Wealth, society, the bourgeois life? The pessimistic atmosphere of the film?