Erich von Stroheim, whose face is disfigured, is the chief engraver at a bank which produces bills for twenty-two nations. His co-workers and underlings don't like him because of his aloof manner, and women avoid him because of his scarred face. On his fiftieth birthday, he goes to a carnival, where he meets Madeleine Sologne. She has been blind since the age of five, and is the 'target' in Yves Vincent's knife-throwing act. Von Stroheim takes her home and marries her, placing her in a magnificent house, which he borrows money to finance. Eventually, he engraves plates for Louis Salou's forgeries.
Director Pierre Chenal pitches this as a dark variation of poetic realism, not quite film noir. There are many of the markers of the latter: the latticed lighting, the Dutch angles, the huge clock on the wall, and so forth. However, because the movie tells the story of von Stroheim's self-destruction at the hands of his unwitting femme fatale, it partakes of the former genre.
I would like to find this a better movie than it is, but it seems a bit tired and obvious and old-fashioned. Von Stroheim had been playing this sort of role for decades, and by this time, he had become an actor-for-hire, available for roles at a set, if large day rate. giving the producers and audiences what they expected. He lacks the dark humor he infused into his earlier parades. Chenal had begun his directorial career strongly, working with Harry Baur in CRIME AND PUNISHMENT. After the War, he turned to well-made works which offered their messages with little subtlety.
