In his first feature, Cavalier depicts a woman who cannot choose between her fascist husband and her liberal lover. The director reveals a lively interest in the phenomenon of ideology. By putting a dilemma on the screen that divided France at the time, but that had not yet been expressed in art, he proved that he had real intellectual courage.The story of the three cornered relationship – so often filmed in the sixties – is linked by Cavalier to the story of a political attack. Yet Le combat dans l’ile is not a militant work, but a film that stresses the similarities between political ideas and activities in love. With his challenging morality, this film is an interesting picture of the hidden face of France in the early sixties. (RP)
