The Rat

This was a solid little melodrama about the Parisian underworld, its denizens and visitors. Anton Walbrook plays Jean Bucheron aka the Rat, a cat-burglar with a heart of, well, at least bronze, maybe silver. A friend on death-row, about to go to his rendez-vous with la guillotine, sends for Jean to ask him to take care of his daughter, the innocent young Odile. By "take care of", the friend means "keep your hands off of", which Jean manages to do, for awhile. Besides keeping his own hands off, Jean is also called upon to fend off a persistent madam (who seems to have no goal in life but to recruit Odile) and some sort of ugly sailor.

Zelia, a wealthy woman played by Ruth Chatterton, goes on a little police-escorted slumming trip with her odious boyfriend, and they end up at Jean's usual haunt just in time to interrupt his plans to kill his ex-partner in a knife fight. Zelia decides she wants to meet the handsome young knife-fighter and asks the chief of police to introduce her. The chief of police says "you don't want to meet him, he's a very unpleasant character" and Zelia responds "but I know so many pleasant characters already..." She needles Jean into dancing with her, and later that night he cat-burgles his way into her boudoir, more to finish their conversation than to steal her pearls.

The two get chummy and evidently go on dates all over the place, though we only see the notes arranging the dates and not the dates themselves. Meanwhile Zelia's god-awful fiancée has taken a shine to Odile, which results in a murder, which results in legal trouble for Jean. Then it's time for the big courtroom scene, where everyone plays a game of Oneupsmanship Of Lies, with a trip to the guillotine for the winner.