I still can’t understand why Robert Hossein agreed to participate in such a messy script by André Cerf and Pierre Chenal. Despite its poor quality, I included it in my collection as a rarity because it was signed with a pseudonym by Dave Young and not Chenal, because of its low budget, and because no one could distinguish its genre: crime? Erotic? Psychological drama? Sociological critique of the pathologies of the elite?

Isabelle, played by the beautiful Marisa Mell, is the administrator of a sanatorium that treats obsessive disorders in millionaires such as the countess, alcoholics such as Judith, and the daughters of millionaires or powerful figures such as Christine Wilmer, the daughter of a general who gave her an ultimatum: either she goes to prison or to the sanatorium in the castle.Isabelle is the partner of Philip Lansac, the owner of the castle where the hospital is located, who has always desired her without being reciprocated. But Isabelle has an intimate relationship with a petty gangster, Serge Belaïeff, who is fleeing other crooks and hiding in a room in the sanatorium.

That must have been the plot, a scathing critique of the frivolity of millionaires and the hypocrisy of the upper classes, but instead, the story falls apart into scenes of little relevance, such as Christine Wilmey’s escape from the hospital and her encounter in the middle of the forest with a hunter she doesn’t know, and, astonishingly, her acceptance of his invitation to his cabin to have sex, Or scenes such as the one in which Serge goes against the mobster Lucas, who was looking for him, only to steal the 200 lemons or millions and take Isabelle away. Isabelle, on the other hand, hears one of the dying patients give the head nurse Irena a necklace worth 170 million with all her heart. Hearing her through the door, she refuses, as she had already decided, to give herself to Philip, whom she neither loves nor desires, and only accepted out of greed and to avoid being evicted from the hospital when it is sold as a castle. The ending is ridiculous because of the party thrown by those who wanted Philip, the owner, to die of a heart attack or something similar, which he faked so that everyone would gather at the hospital and call the police to arrest them. Irene notices the change in the necklace that Isabelle made during the night and then murders the dying old woman with an injection, leaving no trace. Irene realises what has happened and recovers the necklace, shooting Serge in his bed and then Isabelle on the stairs. The grand finale of an incoherent story. The only thing of value, albeit fleeting, was the music.