The Scheming Women

An accidental death or a murder? Henri Decoin's swervy postwar mystery dangles that question over the audience like a loose spotlight, plunging into the teeming worklife of a Parisian theater amidst preparing what looks like a perfectly awful musical play, and struggling to figure out how exactly the theater's grouchy co-owner fell from a catwalk to his death. Immediately suspicion lands on his high-strung partner, Paul (Raymond Rouleau), who was on the catwalk that fateful moment, was he seen in the act, or is someone lying? Believers and haters emerge out of the bustle of the theater, including Paul's creepy, antagonistic secretary (Raymond Pellegrin), a troublesome but starry-eyed typist (Etchika Choureau), and Paul's own wife, who as played by a young Jeanne Moreau toggles from devotion to betrayal in what seems like one slow eyeblink.