Handling

Alain is an alcoholic writer on the verge of committing suicide. Released from treatment at a Versailles clinic, a stay paid for by his estranged wife in New York, he makes the round of old friends and hangouts in Paris, hoping to find a reason to keep living. He finds that none of his former friends are the same; they all have abandoned their ideals to seek happiness in material things. Alain feels empty and disillusioned by society, unable to love and to be loved back, making this movie an existentialist classic.

The Fire Within is based on a 1931 novel by Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, a French fascist and Nazi collaborator who killed himself in 1945. Delicate score by Erik Satie. The movie was nominated for the Golden Lion in Venice 1963 and won the Special Jury Prize and the Italian Film Critics Award.