The F. Scott Fitzgerald Connection
Having just seen “Le Fey Follet,” I was interested in a detail. On Alain’s nightstand table is a copy of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Babylon Revisited and Other Stories,” in an English edition commonly used in colleges at the time (1960's). There is a definite connection between “Babylon Revisited” and “Le Feu Follet.”
A sober Alain goes back to Paris seeking knowledge of his former friends just as a sober Charlie Wales in “Babylon Revisited” goes back to the Ritz Bar in Paris to ask the bartender for news of his former associates. Charlie, like Alain, had led a dissipated life, drinking far too much. At one point, someone mentions that Alain had participated in go-kart racing through the streets of Paris, a childish activity much like some of the activities that Charlie Wales had done.
In a note Lorraine Quarrles--symbolic surname--a friend of yesteryear, writes to Charlie, she mentions the night they stole “the butcher’s tricycle.” Fitzgerald writes, “Charlie’s first feeling was one of awe that he had actually, in his mature years, stolen a tricycle and pedaled Lorraine all over the Ètoile between the small hours and dawn.”
Charlie has returned to Paris to regain custody of his daughter Honoria, symbolic of his honor. Marion, his sister-in-law, is able to retain custody of the Honoria after Lorraine Quarrles and her friend Duncan Schaeffer turn up drunk at Marion’s home, saying they’re looking for Charlie. Because of this, Marion decides that Charlie hasn’t changed at all and will not give up her guardianship of Honoria.
Alain here visits various former friends looking for a connection that will take him away from suicide. He doesn’t find it. Charlie doesn’t get his daughter back, which is important to his life, but he’s stronger than Alain because he’s determined to go on living a sober life and attempt to get Honoria back.
There is a scene here where Alain goes into a café’s men’s room, and a gay man enters. They exchange some stares--cruising--and the gay man is definitely interested, but Alain flees. Later, outside in the café, the man from the bathroom joins a group of three or four gay friends. One of them points out Alain, mentions the name of another homosexual, and says he was in love with Alain a few years back. “But now look at him,” the gay man says, indicating that Alain’s good looks have left him because of his alcoholism. This episode echoes a few lines from “Babylon Revisited” when Fitzgerald writes, “Charlie watched a group of strident queens [effeminate gay men] installing themselves in a corner seat. ‘Nothing affects them’ he thought. ‘Stocks rise and fall, people loaf or work, but they go on forever.’” I’m not quite sure what Fitzgerald was getting at, but my point here is the similarity of the episode in “The Fire Within” and these lines from the short story.
Just before Alain commits suicide, he’s shown reading the last page of “Babylon Revisited and Other Stories.” The last story in this edition is “The Long Way Out.” The story tells of a wealthy young woman named Mrs. King, who had gone into a long coma following the birth of her second child and emerged with a clear case of schizophrenia. Nonetheless, following ten months in a psychiatric hospital, Mrs. King seemed cured of her schizophrenia, and she and her husband were planning a trip to Virginia Beach for five days. Mrs. King packed her bags and, together with an orderly, went downstairs to wait for her husband in lobby of the hospital. In the meantime, her husband’s car had been struck by a truck on the highway as he was on the way to meet her. He was seriously injured and not expected to live.
Mrs. King’s psychiatrist, Dr. Pirie, decided not to tell Mrs. King of her husband’s accident but simply to say that he was not coming to meet her that day. The following day Mrs. King went to the hotel lobby again to await her husband’s arrival, only to be told again he wasn’t coming. The husband died that night, and Dr. Pirie decided to tell Mrs. King only that her husband had been called away and wouldn’t be coming soon. Dr. Pirie felt that when Mrs. King was reconciled to this, he could tell her the truth.
But the next day, Dr. Pirie saw Mrs. King going down the hall again with the orderly who carried her suitcase. Mrs. King said she was going to meet her husband. Dr. Pirie decided this couldn’t go on and told her of her husband’s death.
One of Dr. Pirie’s colleagues went on a vacation shortly after this, but when he returned, he saw Mrs. King, the orderly with her suitcase, and a nurse walking down the hall toward the hospital lobby. Mrs. King calmly explained that she was going to meet her husband.
Dr. Pirie explained to his colleague that when he told Mrs. King of her husband’s death, she would not accept it, saying that he was trying to see whether she was still sick. Her husband’s death was unthinkable to her. So it was decided to let Mrs. King go to the lobby as she wished. And she has stayed on in the hospital, continuing to go each day to the lobby to await her husband.
This is a trite story; the plot is one every student of a college creative writing course has heard of. But here, within the context of the film, the story can refer to Alain’s life. If he can find no reason to live, to continue would be a death-in-life existence, as meaningless as Mrs. King’s waiting each day for her husband’s arrival.