Die Schenke zum Vollmond

In her break-out film role, Simone Signoret plays a girl at Bernard Blier's cheap nightclub in the Antwerp Harbor. Her pimp is Dalio, the door porter. She is scared of him. Blier treats his girls like family, insisting they help clear the tables after their communal meals; it's good training for when they get married, he says.

Into his menage enters Marcello Pagliero, a sailor who engages in some sort of illicit trade -- It's a Gabin sort of role, were this not a vehicle for Mlle Signor. Blier eyes him as marriage material for her, and soon they are much in love.

It was directed for Mlle Signoret by her then husband,Yves Allégret, and clearly intended as Marcel Carné poetic realism sort of movie; Allégret uses many actos who played for Carné. It's a poor effort, almost a burlesque of the form, but Mlle Signoret is luminous, and Blier is excellent.