With a script by Jacques de Baroncelli (Folco de Baroncelli's younger brother), this is Clouzot's first film, a fifteen-minute short made ten years before his first feature. And it contains a number of twists within that short time, the first giving the appearance of a film noir when in fact it's a comedy.
The burglar, the self-styled 'Terreur des Batignolles', is in fact hardly a terror, and his cowardice is soon witnessed by, on his having broken into a bourgeois appartment, his fear of a kitten. And then he's surprised when a couple in evening dress – Marianne (Germaine Aussey) and Robert (Jean Wall) – come in, so he hides behind a curtain. But Marianne noticed his feet – bootless as he has them round his neck so as not to make a noise – and they decide to play a game on him.
They pretend to be in a suicide pact, and as Robert closes the window and uses draught excluders for the door, the burglar is so frightened when Robert turns on the gas that he reveals himself. And here another twist is made as Robert robs him of the money in his wallet and Marianne takes his ring. As the burglar makes his exit there's another twist: the couple in evening dress are in fact burglars and Robert begins working on the safe. And La Terreur des Batignolles even finds that his watch has been stolen.
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