French filmmaker Alain Cavalier's 1962 directorial debut melds a political allegory with a love triangle to powerful effect. Le Combat dans L'ile ("The Fight on the Island") also predicted Bernardo Bertolucci's classic 1970 film The Conformist, in which Jean-Louis Trintignant played another fascist assassin to even greater acclaim.
As Cavalier introduces him, Clément (Trintignant) works at his industrialist father's factory, while his wife, the radiant Anne (Romy Schneider) gave up her career as an actress once they got married. Though he appreciates her charm and beauty, Clément is quick to anger when she plays music too loud or chats with other men in public--and doesn't hesitate to use fisticuffs to assert his dominance. When he quits his job, seemingly out of the blue, Anne worries about their future, more so when she finds him meeting with strange men, like the creepy Serge (Pierre Asso), or hiding high-powered weaponry in their coat closet.
When an assassination attempt involving the rocket-launcher goes awry, Clément reveals his membership in a fascist, pro-military outfit, after which the couple flees Paris to stay with Clément's childhood friend, Paul (Jules and Jim's Henri Serre), a widowed publisher who lives in rural Normandy, surrounded by eager young apprentices and devoted teenaged housekeeper Cécile (Diane Lepvrier). The pacifist Paul finds his friend's emergent right-wing beliefs abhorrent, but after Clément's photo appears in all the papers and Anne falls ill, he doesn't hesitate to let her stay on after her husband chases the duplicitous Serge to South America.
Upon her recovery, Anne and the less-worldly Cécile become friends, while she and Paul become something more, not least when she sparks to a play written by his late wife, leading him to encourage her return to the stage. Then Clément, still a fugitive, returns to find that his wife has fallen in love with his friend. A man who only understands violence, Clément challenges the publisher to a duel. "What are you, 12?," Paul asks, but he has to accept if he wants to stay with Anne--and to live.
Though Cavalier's screenplay, cowritten with Jean-Paul Rappeneau (Louis Malle's Zazie dans le Métro), never mentions the Algerian War by name, it's a clear inspiration, not least because Trintignant himself had served his mandatory military service in Algeria after starring in And God Created Woman. Due to the deft writing and well-honed performances, Clément and Paul feel like actual human beings, and not just symbols of political division--with Anne (as France) caught in the middle.
Radiance's second Cavalier reissue, after 1976's Fill Er Up with Super, also includes his 1958 Claude Chabrol-produced short, Un Américain, a proto-Godardian portrait of a struggling artist, on which Loulou's Maurice Pialat served as assistant.
In interviews, Cavalier has described his first feature as his third, because he contributed so extensively to mentor Louis Malle's Elevator to the Gallows and The Lovers. Malle, who shared his political beliefs, produced Le Combat dans L'ile, which wouldn't premiere in the United States until 2009. All told, it's a first-rate film from an undervalued talent.
What kind of film collection would this title be suitable for?
Le Combat dans L'ile would provide an excellent acquisition for French-language collections in public and academic libraries. Beautifully shot in black and white by Pierre Lhomme (Army of Shadows), the film would also fit with political thrillers.
What kind of film series would this narrative fit in?
Alain Cavalier's first feature would fit with series on his wide-ranging career, in addition to a series on the decades-spanning work of Jean-Louis Trintignant and Romy Schneider, both in great form here, years before the greater fame they found in the 1970s.
What academic subjects would this film be suitable for?
Le Combat dans L'ile would be suitable for courses on the non-nouvelle vague filmmakers of the 1960s and France in the post-World War II era, during the Algerian War, and vis-à-vis the decolonization process and fascist organizing of the 20th century.