''Dans la nuit'' (English: ''In the Night'') is a 1929 French

silent film A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound (or more generally, no audible dialogue). Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements (such as a setting or era) or key lines of dialogue may, when ...

Charles Vanel Charles-Marie Vanel (21 August 1892 – 15 April 1989) was a French actor and director. During his 76-year film career, which began in 1912, he appeared in more than 200 films and worked with many prominent directors, including Alfred Hitchcock, ...

. The film is a macabre drama about a disfigured worker who wears a mask to hide his face from his unfaithful wife. The producers imposed a happy ending on the film.

Louis Sclavis Louis Sclavis (born 2 February 1953) is a French jazz musician. He performs on clarinet, bass clarinet, and soprano saxophone in a variety of contexts, including avant-garde jazz, free jazz, free improvisation and contemporary classical. Life ...

recorded a jazz soundtrack album ''Dans la nuit'' for ECM in 2002.

Plot

In a small mining town, a couple gets married, attending a celebration in town before returning home for the night. Months later, the husband is injured because of an explosion at the pit where he works. He survives but is left with disfiguring scars on his face, which he covers with a mask. The wife falls for another man, and the two form a plan to run away together. At the last minute, the husband comes home to find them together, ready to leave. The two men get into a fight, each wearing a mask, and the husband is overpowered. They dump the body into a pool of water in the mine. The following morning, the wife begs to leave town, only to find that her husband had attacked her affair partner and taken his place before they hid the body. She awakens in bed to see her unscarred husband and realizes that the whole story had been a terrible nightmare.

References

External links

* 1929 films French silent films French black-and-white films 1920s French films {{Silent-film-stub