"A landmark in cinema history. . . . Its influence on subsequent French cinema is far from exhausted" (David Thomson). Antonioni acknowledged the immense influence of Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne on his own work, Demy paid delirious homage to it in such films as Lola, and Godard provocatively called it "the only film of the French Resistance"; no wonder Richard Roud deemed it "a universally seminal film." Relocating an episode from Diderot's Jacques le Fataliste to the present day, Les Dames is about a jealous woman (Maria Casarès, in a piercing performance) who takes revenge on the man who spurned her (Paul Bernard) by tricking him into marriage with a prostitute (Elina Labourdette). Jean Cocteau wrote the dialogue for this glistening drama of revenge, which, despite its elegantly acid language and luxe setting, is remarkably Bressonian in its emphasis on entrapment, sacrifice, and redemption. Vicious, delicious, a conte cruel of the highest order, Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne is "a masterpiece. It remains the greatest achievement of its decade in France" (P. Adams Sitney).