Crime

Convinced of his own intelligence and talent, René Brunel (Robert Hossein) decide to try that is above the bourgeois and kills an old pawnbroker in cold blood morality. Gallet commissioner (Jean Gabin), case manager, we will pursue relentlessly and subtle, convinced it has something to do with it. Suffocating pressure that added to the ideas raised in his talks with Lili Marcelini (Marina Vlady), a prostitute he has met recently, make awareness of René fall on him without mercy.

A man and a woman arrive in a cafe-hotel near the belgian frontier. The customers recognize the man from the police's description. His name is Amedee Lange, he murdered Batala in Paris. His lady friend Valentine tells the whole story : Lange was an employee in Batala's little printing works. Batala was a real bastard, swindling every one, seducing female workers of Valentine's laundry… One day he fled to avoid facing his creditors, and the workers set up a cooperative to go on working. But the plot is less important that the description of the atmosphere just before the Popular Front.