The Cigarette

Summary

Amidst the gilded halls of a Parisian museum, celebrated director Henri Dubois crafts his own macabre existential experiment. Convinced his wife Élise's affections have withered into indifference, he delicately laces a single cigarette with lethal toxin and places it among the innocents in his desk case – surrendering his fate to capricious chance. Each social ritual becomes a danse macabre as Élise unknowingly offers the poisoned case to dinner guests, while Henri observes with detached fascination. The tension crescendos when a rival suitor selects the fatal cylinder during an after-opera gathering, forcing Henri into a desperate race against time through rain-lashed Parisian streets to prevent his symbolic suicide from becoming literal murder.

Synopsis

A Parisian museum director believes his wife has lost interest in him and so places a poisoned cigarette in the box on his desk - thus allowing chance to decide the moment of his death.