Film 16: Fete Red (The)

An old forgotten painter, Sironi, witness of a fire, throws himself into the flames, screaming: Agnès. Transported in agony on a bench, he remembers: once a successful painter, he had married a young woman from a good family, the marvelous Agnès, herself a painter of great talent. Sacrificing his integrity on the altar of the worldly, Sironi had lost his audience and Agnes gained hers. Jealous, vain, cruel, forgetful of his former bohemian companions, Sironi had then made life impossible for his loving wife. Then there was this charity sale, in 1897, this big bazaar ravaged by a fire (because of a piece of ignited film in a room where we were doing demonstrations of this new fad called "cinematograph"!) Agnès had perished there all the more since Sironi had just locked her up in a closet.