Albertine is the daughter of a bourgeois couple who house a young officer during the Napoleonic wars. Newly promoted, the officer is treated by the family with a cold politeness bordering on indifference…until one evening, to his astonishment, Albertine seizes his hand under the dinner table.

The Crimson Curtain was the debut feature of film critic Alexandre Astruc, renowned for his theories on auteur cinema, and his coining of the phrase the “camera-pen”. Starring a 20-year-old Anouk Aimée, it is a rewarding experiment in telling a narrative story exclusively through visuals.