User Reviews

"Le feu dans la peau" is a rather good surprise thanks to sleazy situations in countryside and a terrific ending with outstanding Raymond Pellegrin, nearly as crazy as Peter Lorre, and his final run is complete madness. But the script is so weak besides these scenes, and the casting is not as good as Raymond Pellegrin. It could have been a much better movie with more work.

Marcel Blistene was an odd-job man of the French cinema.His movies dealt with Edith Piaf,comics character Bibi Fricotin,saints ("Le Sorcier Du Ciel" a biopic of the Curé D'Ars which I saw at Sunday school and which scared me to death)and more..

"Le Feu Dans La Peau" got a PG 18 when it was released and vetoed by the Centrale Catholique Du Cinema" that deemed it "immoral" .It did not spare the viewer the sordid details.The characters are defective people who look like Emile Zola's minus the writer's genius.

A peasant meets a city girl (Giselle Pascal)during his military service;he takes her to his farm where his sexually-repressed brother (Raymond Pellegrin)and a crude servant (Nadine Basile ) live . The men are bestial brutes ,the women sluts or false virtuous ladies.The screenplay is sometimes very weak:for instance,Pierre (Philippe Lemaire) appears and disappears without much purpose ,which makes the viewer think that the whole thing was made haphazard .

A note about the actors:

Raymond Pellegrin goes to great pains to give his character substance ;by far the best actor of the cast,he is to be commended considering the limits he is working under.He was Giselle Pascal' s husband in real life.

Giselle Pascal had reportedly an affair with Gary Cooper before marrying Pellegrin.She never made a truly memorable movie,with the eventual exception of "Horizons sans Fin" (Jean Dréville,1952) which was about pilot Helene Boucher.

Nadine Basile was specialized in demeaning parts (see also "La Neige Etait Sale"),a nasty Arlette Thomas who also played parts today's actresses would not even think of.

This film caused controversy when it came out and at the time of its release in 1954 the sexuality as well as the violence must have shocked. Time alters the impact of what we see on the screen, and now in my opinion it is nothing more than a well directed melodrama. A woman Therese ( from perhaps Paris, but that maybe conjecture ) played well by Giselle Pascal, marries a man from the south of France, and goes to live with him there. The film opens with his death from falling from a cliff. A flashback shows him to be a violent man. Alone in the house with his brother played by Raymond Pellegrin and a young woman who is a servant, tensions rise, and it is clear that Pellegrin's desire for Therese is somewhat alleviated by the servant's desire for him. Then the now underrated actor Philippe Lemaire appears on the scene. An army man he appears to be on the run, and adopting the false name of Pierre shelters in the house because of a wound in a fight. Therese and he fall in love ( tender but passionately shown ) and escape the house, but his recapture alters everything and Therese returns. End of spoilers. A tangled web of obsessions drives the film to its conclusion, and yes the film is abusive towards women, but pales in comparison to the sufferings and deaths of women on the screen and television today. To sum up I found it very watchable, and the acting is much better than it is given credit for. In my opinion Giselle Pascal gives a refined and rather tragic performance and so does Philippe Lemaire in his role. It has never been released on DVD outside of France to my knowledge, and the UK on its cinema release gave it an X certificate for viewers over sixteen. A ' lost ' film ( even in France ) it is somewhat hard to find, and it is worth finding for the acting alone.