La Môme Pigalle

This tatty exploitation piece is simultaneously manic and repressed, silly and cynical, as paranoid as Invasion of the Body Snatchers and altogether a prime '50s artifact. Dupuis is the Pigalle Babe, a nightclub singer hoping to marry her nice young man (Nicaud), but falling into lust with a killer (Gaven) and confiding all to her best friend (Carrel). But the nice young man's a con artist, the killer's an undercover cop, and Carrel is an insurance sleuth posing as a stripper. Talk about the age of uncertainty... Quantities of nudes swan about, while Alfred Rode et Son Orchestre (that's right, a bandleader/cinéaste) rip through a couple of numbers. This was the fifth of eight titles from Rode-Dupuis, perhaps the cinema's least romantic husband-and-wife combo.