Metropa-Films

In the middle of the 19th century, Tsar Alexander II made the acquaintance of a young aristocratic girl from the provinces, unruly in character. He falls in love with her and tries to see her again.

A ten-year old film when it was first released in the USA as "Symphonie D'Amour" in 1946. Panard (Fernand Gravet) is a talented composer who is having little success in his musical career. He is reduced to hiring out as a sandwich-board man to advertise what proves to be his own show. His girl, Jacqueline Francell, interests a Marquis in backing the show. She and Panard are happily reunited after the successful opening of his operetta.

A young aristocrat whose ruined father decided to marry her spends one last night as a bachelor at the boarding school ball. But there, cheerful students strip her of her clothes and she finds refuge precisely with her future husband whom she did not know. Of course, the marriage that was so repugnant to them fills them with joy.

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).