Based on a play by Pierre Wolff, about a wronged husband’s revenge on his wife and her lover, La belle de nuit is a major find, a work of uninhibited stylistic imagination that ranges from Sirkian stylization (an elaborate play of mirrors and doubles) to brutal realism (a tour of the bordellos of Marseille suggests the contemporary photographs of Brassaï).
A two-bit gambler somehow claws his way to the top. His love for riches is only matched by his love for his wife, but he is sometimes confused by which he loves most.
An unpolished racketeer, whose racket is finding heirs for unclaimed fortunes, affects ethics and tea-drinking manners to win back the sweetheart who now works for his seemingly upright competitor.
Stan and Ollie travel to the mountains for Ollie's health, and park their caravan near a well into which a gang of moonshiners have earlier dumped their moonshine; and the boys proceed to quench their thirst thinking that it is iron-rich mountain water.
When her husband, who founded the town's crusading local newspaper, doesn't come back from the French battlefields of World War I, a woman struggles to raise her two sons and keep the newspaper going.
Young Alice Mason wishes to start a family, but because her own has been deemed "defective" by the state health authorities—her parents are lazy alcoholics who continue breeding, and her siblings are disabled, have mental problems or are imprisoned—she is ordered by a court to undergo sterilization so that her family's "defective genes" won't be passed on to any further.
A small town politician, kept from marrying the love of his life, eventually marries another woman and his career ascends, but he secretly continues the relationship with his true love.
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