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| Images courtesy of Radiance Films |
The debut film of still active French writer-director Alain
Cavalier Le combat dans l’ile or Fire and Ice depending on the
translation is one of the great underrated French crime thrillers with more
than a dash of French New Wave influences filtered into the dark and violent
proceedings. A film that predated the
works of Jean-Pierre Melville, Claude Chabrol and even Bernardo Bertolucci with
the helpful production aid of renowned French filmmaker Louis Malle of Elevator
to the Gallows, it represents a largely overlooked loosely romantic crime
thriller that also tried to bring to screen attention the short-lived
right-wing French terrorist movement Organisation armée secrete or OAS which
was active during the height of the Algerian War. What it mostly functions as however is a neo-noir
soaked romantic triangular drama that starts out rather mod before boiling into
a tense and nerve wracking survival thriller.
Thanks to the efforts of boutique label Radiance Films, this underrated gem
is only making its English language disc debut for the first time.
Violent sociopathic Clement (Jean-Louis Trintignant) leads a
double life as wealthy industrialist son when he isn’t functioning as a
political assassin for the OAS. A domineering,
boorish man who slaps around his pretty waifish wife Anne (Romy Schneider), the
dysfunctional couple leads a tranquil life until Clement is double-crossed
following a botched assassination attempt with a bazooka. Forced to move into the countryside for
temporary hiding while a nationwide manhunt for Clement is in progress, the
criminal takes refuge in his childhood friend Paul’s (Henri Serre) secluded
home where he works as a printing pressor.
However, Anne tired of being pushed and smacked around starts falling
for her husband’s friend Paul who maintains careful distance but soon finds
himself falling in love back, much to the chagrin of Clement who grows
increasingly psychotic and murderous with jealous rage. Threatening to expose his OAS comrades in an
explosive series of violent attacks, Clement unleashes an all out one-man-war
on Paul, forcing the nonviolent bookworm into action in a vicious fight to the
death.
Largely overlooked and underseen by international audiences,
the first feature of Alain Cavalier restored in 2K from the original camera negative
is a perfectly composed and taut thriller that starts out oddly romantic for
being mixed with domineering violence before turning into a survival thriller
pitted against a crazy dangerous man.
Exemplar of the technical heights and innovation of the French New Wave
as well as a kind of jazzy debonair cool atmosphere filled with coffee shops, well
dressed criminals and men in trench coats running around with pistols, it is a
multilayered almost labyrinthine narrative with all the convolution associated
with the film noir movement. Lensed
exquisitely by Army of Shadows cinematographer Pierre Lhomme and scored
to a jazzy tee by Parisian composer Serge Nigg, the world of Fire and Ice is
slick, cool, enticing but above all a dangerous place to tread lightly in.
Veteran And God Created Woman actor Jean-Louis
Trintignant as the neurotic sociopathic Clement despite his Napoleonic size
exudes psychotic danger in every scene he’s in.
Particularly focused on his eyes with many low angled close ups looking
up at the actor’s angry face, we can’t help but fear him as he starts breaking
the code and carefully placed social barriers to forcibly “win” his wife’s love
back. Romy Schneider in one of her
youngest roles gives off airs of carefree innocence and budding sexual
curiosity which continues to get stomped out like a flower by her domineering
husband. Henri Serre as his lifelong
friend Paul who finds himself growing at an impasse with Clement over the love
of Anne makes the character of the printing pressor a sophisticated nonviolent
man who is cornered more and more into becoming like Clement out of
self-preservation.
A brilliant, expertly designed and fashioned French New Wave
romantic crime thriller filled with three pitch perfect performances from the
three leads, Fire and Ice is something of an unsung masterpiece of 1960s
French cinema that plays around with the conventions and acting while offering
up a formidable and intimidating scenario.
Begging the question of viewers what they would do under similar circumstances,
its a film that predates such investigations into manhood defined by violence
as Straw Dogs or more recently Aita where we’re forced to become
what we despise in order to remain alive.
Radiance Films’ new special-edition blu-ray is great and marks an
important newly rediscovered addition to the annals of distinctly French New
Wave era cinema whose subversion of conventions and norms of storytelling still
resonates stronger than ever with filmgoers today.
--Andrew Kotwicki
