Le Nid du Tigre

Pierre Wesselrin is a 40-year-old American who lives in Paris by sponging off his working friends and various wealthy acquaintances. He receives a telegram saying that a rich aunt has died, so he throws a party, using borrowed money of course, and invites all his friends. After discovering that his aunt disinherited him, his luggage is impounded and he is thrown out of his apartment. All his friends are now away for the summer, or are working outside Paris, so he is forced to wander the streets and become a clochard.

When the Parisian bourgeois Geneviève Le Theil travels to Dijon to resolve outstanding subjects in the inheritance left by her wealthy aunt, she mistakenly opens the door of another room in the hotel, finding a suicidal near death on the bed. Later Geneviève goes to the hospital and is introduced to Renaud Sarti, the nihilistic alcoholic vagrant she saved. Geneviève falls in love for Renaud and brings him to her apartment in Paris, initiating a destructive, masochistic and corrupt relationship with the abusive man.