The postwar cinema was perhaps even more noir in France than it was in the U.S., and this 1946 film by Julien Duvivier is unremittingly grim and guilt ridden. Michel Simon stars as a social outcast who discovers that his dream girl (Viviane Romance) is setting him up to take the blame for the brutal murder of an old woman—a killing actually committed by her lover. The screenplay is by Charles Spaak (La grande illusion), from a novel by Georges Simenon. In French with subtitles.