Jean Angelo is a degenerate gambler. His losses at baccarat have bankrupted his lover, Nathalie Lissenko. When he steals four hundred thousand francs and loses that at the gambling tables, he flees to the United States, and Nathalie takes the blame. Twenty years later, she has a flourishing career as a night club singer, but their son is just as inept a gambler as his father had been.
I am not fond of men-must-play-and-women-must-weep soap operas, nor does the script do much to make this interesting. Instead, I did a lot of blinking at the set design by Pierre Kefer, who worked with director Jean Epstein on two other movies, including the famous THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. Every room is decorated in perfect taste and has ceilings at least fourteen feet high -- in fact you never see ceilings.
Epstein does make a couple of attempts to insert his psychological shots: on on the rocks as Madame Lissenko considers suicide, which is effective, and another, in which her son watches in horror as his cellmate plays with a couple of white rats, which is ridiculous. Still, they make this one good.
I am not fond of men-must-play-and-women-must-weep soap operas, nor does the script do much to make this interesting. Instead, I did a lot of blinking at the set design by Pierre Kefer, who worked with director Jean Epstein on two other movies, including the famous THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. Every room is decorated in perfect taste and has ceilings at least fourteen feet high -- in fact you never see ceilings.
Epstein does make a couple of attempts to insert his psychological shots: on on the rocks as Madame Lissenko considers suicide, which is effective, and another, in which her son watches in horror as his cellmate plays with a couple of white rats, which is ridiculous. Still, they make this one good.
