This is the first time Henry Decoin teamed with star Danielle Darrieux(whose career spans the whole story of the French cinema after the beginning of the talkies:think about it,she's one of the Ozon's "huit femmes" in 2002!!!)
So almost 70 years before.."le domino vert";the construction of the movie is weird indeed:a short introduction,then a very long flashback(more than an hour) ,then back to the present in search of the truth:because it's primarily a detective story mixed with melodrama elements:a young girl from a chic milieu ,raised by relatives,discovers that her father killed his wife ,and besides,that he had a lover ,Darrieux's mother.Flashback(Darrieux plays the two parts,mother and daughter).Was he guilty? A young lawyer helps the daughter ,twenty years later,to find what really happened;this last part is definitely the weakest link:their investigation lasts barely ten minutes on the screen and a ten-year old could guess the solution of the riddle.
This is mainly a curios ,but it reveals Decoin's metier:the psychological thriller.This is only a sketch but it predates his great achievements of the forties and the fifties:"les inconnus dans la maison" "non coupable" "la vérité sur Bébé Donge" (again with Darrieux )or "bonnes à tuer".One wishes that some day they will reissue "malefices"(1962) from a sensational Boileau-Narcejac (diabolique,vertigo)screenplay ,which is very hard to see.
