Le Combat Dans L’île

Related Content

• The Weekly Wire: The Week's Recommended Events
  December 15, 2010
• The Weekly Wire: The Week's Recommended Events
  November 4, 2009
• Innocence Lost
  March 24, 2010
• Z
  July 29, 2009
• My Night at Maud's
  June 17, 2009

More About

• Jean-Louis Trintignant
• Romy Schneider
• Offenbach

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Events Newsletter: What's happening in town? From underground club nights to the biggest outdoor festivals, our top picks for the week's best events will always keep you in on the action.

Privacy Policy Cancel Continue

Alain Cavalier’s 1962 Le Combat Dans L’île isn’t a lost masterpiece—it’s too unstable for that—but it’s fascinatingly nervy. Right-wing militant Clément (Jean-Louis Trintignant) broods around the house, concerned that wife Anne (Romy Schneider) is acting like a slut. Clément’s a man of contradictions; when the negotiations he’s conducting on behalf of workers at his father’s factory break down, Clément grabs his bazooka and heads out to assassinate a politician. As that token summary implies, Combat isn’t overly concerned with coherence or a smooth arc. Instead, it’s a dizzying array of dialectics: Anne’s discovery of the bazooka against the background of her maid singing Offenbach is the neatest (and least extreme) reduction of revolutionary vs. counterrevolutionary dynamics here. Pierre Lhomme’s scintillating, jagged black-and-white cinematography is ahead of its time, and the film’s unexpectedly bifurcated structure sends Trintignant into the ether for almost the entire back half. There’s a surprise every five minutes, except when fascism gets its ass kicked at the end. (NR) VADIM RIZOV
Nov. 6-8, 8 p.m.; Sat., Nov. 7, 2 & 4 p.m.; Sun., Nov. 8, 2, 4 & 6 p.m.; Wed., Nov. 11, 8 p.m.; Thu., Nov. 12, 8 p.m., 2009