Le Plaisir

Le Plaisir is a French anthology film made up of three stories drawn from the short fiction of Guy de Maupassant, all circling the theme of pleasure and its costs. In the first, an ageing man hides his years behind a mask so he can keep attending Paris balls and courting women, until his body gives out on the dance floor. The longest episode follows Madame Tellier, who runs a brothel and closes it for a day to take her girls to the countryside for her niece's first communion. The last concerns Jean, a painter who falls for his model, Joséphine, and finds that trying to end the affair brings disaster.

Max Ophüls directed, with a screenplay by Jacques Natanson and Édouard Harispuru producing. The film sits between Letter from an Unknown Woman and Caught and his later The Earrings of Madame de... and Lola Montès in a career that began with Liebelei in 1933. The cast includes Claude Dauphin as the doctor, Gaby Morlay, Madeleine Renaud as Julia Tellier, Ginette Leclerc, Mila Parély and Danielle Darrieux, among 32 credited players. The three-part structure lets Ophüls move between Paris ballrooms, a country farm and a painter's studio.

On IMDb the film holds 7.5 from around 5,800 votes, and on TMDB 7.5 from about 140 votes. A critics' rating of 7.7 from 10 reviews places it slightly above those audience scores.