Alexandre Astruc's Le Rideau cramoisi | The Crimson Curtain (1953)

Astruc's Le Rideau cramoisi is a forty-four minute medium length film based on Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly's short story from his book Les Diaboliques (1874). There is no dialogue at all, but the story is told by Yves Furet as if he were the Vicomte de Brassard, the man who told him this story of when he was a young officer (played by Jean-Claude Pascal).

As a lieutenant of twenty he once stayed with a couple, played here by Jim Gérald and Marguerite Garcya, whose company he found very boring but only sees them for dinner and souper. And then one day something happens which will have a great effect on him for the rest of his life: the beautiful eighteen-year-old Albertine (Anouk Aimée), the couple's daughter, suddenly appears at the dinner table. Before long she is surreptitiously putting her hand on the officer's, and keeping her foot on his throughout the meal. The young man becomes obsessed, passes Albertine a note, but from then on Albertine for some unknown reason sits not next to the officer but between her parents.

And then the inexplicable happens when Albertine comes to the officer's room and they have passionate sex: she has been very brave to do so as she has to pass through her sleeping parents' room in order to get there. Nevertheless, the young woman regularly turns up for passionate nights every other night: the officer is pretty sure that they don't love each other, and apart from the sex the woman is impassive, so why spoil a good thing?

But on the final night she arrives earlier than usual, more passionate than ever, but then just dies on the bed. The officer makes sure she is in fact dead, thinks of doing away with the body in several ways, even doing away with himself: but what a pointless waste at the age of twenty! In the end he just leaves the house, never to return and never to hear anything of the matter again.