Playwright André Luguet returns home one evening to find a beautiful stranger on his doorstep. She faints at his feet, and when she comes to on his sofa a few minutes later she claims to know nothing of who she is, how she got there, or why there's a recently fired gun in her purse. To add to his troubles, Luguet's fiancée is due home any moment.
This is a style of stage comedy transferred, with no great inventiveness, to the cinema. It's very reminiscent of 1942's Boléro, which also has André Luguet as a dapper, befuddled and slightly preposterous leading man, struggling to preserve his dignity while his world crumbles and reforms around him. In my review of Boléro, I said that the main interest of that film was Arletty. Here, it's Madeleine Sologne, a familiar and distinctive face of French Occupation cinema, whose odd, angular beauty and sense of other-worldliness (enhanced by her role in the recent L'Eternel Retour) add a welcome air of intrigue to this otherwise routine comedy.
This is a style of stage comedy transferred, with no great inventiveness, to the cinema. It's very reminiscent of 1942's Boléro, which also has André Luguet as a dapper, befuddled and slightly preposterous leading man, struggling to preserve his dignity while his world crumbles and reforms around him. In my review of Boléro, I said that the main interest of that film was Arletty. Here, it's Madeleine Sologne, a familiar and distinctive face of French Occupation cinema, whose odd, angular beauty and sense of other-worldliness (enhanced by her role in the recent L'Eternel Retour) add a welcome air of intrigue to this otherwise routine comedy.