Summary
Paris, 1914: a marble foyer becomes a crimson stage when Henriette Caillaux, gloved in dove-gray, fires six silver bullets into Le Figaro’s editor, Gaston Calmette. The echo ricochets through Belle Époque salons, rattling stock-ticker tape and diplomatic pouches alike. Adrian Johnson’s screenplay spirals outward from the smoking Browning, stitching a labyrinth of coded telegrams, vanished ledgers, and velvet bribes that link Joseph Caillaux’s finance ministry to Berlin’s war chest. In chiaroscuro parlors, ministers barter secrets like love notes; in moonlit basements, typists transcribe treason in lavender ink. The trial—part opera, part autopsy—unfurls with the gusto of a Grand Guignol matinee: Norma McCloud’s Henriette, poised between Medea and martyr, claims passion’s privilege while silk-hatted spies squirm on the stand. Eugene Ormonde’s Caillaux, a panther in white tie, trades smiles for shredded dossiers. Emile La Croix’s Calmette, resurrected in flashback, haunts newsrooms like a guttering projector bulb. By the time the jury retires, the Republic itself sits in the dock, its colonial medals tarnished by whispers of a double indemnity with the Kaiser. Verdict or no, the film leaves the audience clutching a rusted moral compass, its needle quivering between adultery and high treason.
Synopsis
Based on an international scandal that hit prewar France, when the editor of the Paris daily LE FIGARO, Gaston Calmette was shot to death by Madame Caillaux, wife of the Minister of Finance for his exposè of her husband's traitorous activities on behalf of Germany. A sensational trial afterward revealed the extent of the Caillaux spy ring's infiltration of the French government.
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