Le rideau rouge

As a theater in Montmartre is opening a play based on Shakespeare's Macbeth, the lives of the director-star and two more actors mirror the events in the play. But the filmmakers are so intent on emphasizing this point - that the on-stage and the off-stage stories parallel each other - that they forget to develop "their" story (the off-stage one); there are too many scenes of the play being enacted. Apart from one scene, there is not enough passion between the lovers; Michel Simon, in a dual role, steals the show from both of them. As a whodunit, it is competent but talky: there are really only three suspects. **1/2 out of 4.