Gabrielle Fontan

From frenchfilms.org

Georges Simenon’s 1940 novel Les Inconnus dans la maison is a brooding study in social breakdown and youth disaffection that contains a powerful critique of western society of the 1940s. The same can equally be said of Henri Decoin’s magnificent film adaptation, one of the earliest and most successful attempts to bring Simenon’s bleak, melancholic world to the big screen. This was the second film that Decoin made for the German-run film company Continental-Films during the Nazi Occupation of France and it could hardly be more different in tone and subject from his first, the American-style romantic comedy Premier rendez-vous (1941).Read More »

Synopsis:
Since his wife left him, almost twenty years ago, the once brilliant lawyer Loursat has slumped into a life of despondency and drunkenness. He lives in a vast empty house with his teenage daughter, Nicole, with whom he hardly communicates. One fateful day, something happens which pulls Loursat back from the abyss: he discovers a dead body in his house. When his daughter and her group of rebellious young friends are charged with the murder, Loursat decides to take charge of the case.Read More »