A mother burns her past to find her son—then discovers the flame's gone out.
A woman of easy virtue rejects a proposal of marriage made to her by a rich lover. But when her son is taken from her to be brought up in the best conditions, she keeps thinking about him. When she finds him, twenty years later, she can not adapt to the environment to which he now belongs.
Acting
Line Noro's devastating restraint as Cléo.
Costume
Two decades of fashion telling the story silently.
Director
André Berthomieu
Line Noro
Cléo d'Aubigny
Charles Vanel
Victor Boussat
Gabriel Signoret
Lord Sidley
Josette Day
Hélène de Luyze
Bernard Lancret
Edward Sidley
Raymond Cordy
The blunderer
Colette Darfeuil
Fanny
Mady Berry
Mrs. Laure
Henri Crémieux
Detective
Paul Demange
The boy
Jean Diéner
H. de Luyze
Claire Gérard
Childminder
Jean Marconi
Gigolo
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Pre-occupation French cinema often explored fallen women with surprising sympathy—this predates the stricter moral codes that followed.
Josette Day, who plays Edward's fiancée Hélène, would later play Belle in Cocteau's 1946 Beauty and the Beast—a very different class fantasy.
FR
