Impasse des deux anges

Actress Simone Signoret is the toast of Paris. She has been offered an international tour that her agent says is worth half a million to him. She's turned it down to marry Marquis Marcel Herrand. He's so madly in love with her that he's marrying her without a contract, which means everything is community property. This annoys his sister, whose sons will not inherit anything. She meets the family at a hoity-toity party, where the one person who isn't rude to her makes her feel worse because of his ineptness. Then, on the way home, she meets her old love who disappeared on her, Paul Meurisse.

Maurice Tourneur's last film wavers enchantingly between poetic realism and film noir, with an air of unhappiness lurking over everyone. The year after this movie came out, he was in a bad auto accident. His age made a recovery to work impossible. He died in 1961, aged 85, 48 years after he had entered the film industry.