Gathering up 100 French movies to watch over 100 days,I was thrilled to find that a very kind IMDber had sent me a creepy-sounding French Film Noir co-written/directed and starring Robert Hossein,which led to me getting ready to find out what the night is for.The plot:Walking off the beach, Pierre Menda gets offered a lift from a mysterious women.Parking up,the women takes her clothes off,and has sex with Menda.With having had sex with her,Menda decides to ask the women what her name is (!),which leads to a gun being put against his face. Interested in finding the women,Menda looks round the area and finds the car parked outside a mansion.Entering the mansion,Menda finds it to contain two sisters,the wheelchair bound Eva Lecain and her career Hélène.Finding himself drawn into their complicated relationship,Menda begins to suspect that the sisters are keeping something secret from him.View on the film:Rolling the role away from being a charity case, Marina Vlady gives an exquisite performance as Eva Lecain,whose angelic face Vlady cracks to unveil the femme fatale laying in wait.Giving up everything to take care of her sister, Odile Versois gives an excellent performance as Hélène,by Versois walking a fine wire which puts all of the weight of the years of care on Hélène's shoulders,and also steps on her sinister Film Noir side. Entering the Lecain mansion, Robert Hossein gives a rugged performance as Film Noir loner Menda,by Hossein initially giving Menda a peacemaker shell which starts to crack as Menda begins to doubt how much he can trust the sisters.Locking the trio up in the mansion,director Hossein & cinematographer Robert Juillard cast a blistering Film Noir atmosphere over the title,which unleashes a white-hot sun that burns the shadows of the sisters and Menda.Backed by a playful score from his dad André,Hossein displays a masterful eye for detail,thanks to Hossein having the sisters linger in the background like a ghost haunting this Film Noir chamber.Splashing Frédéric Dard's crisp pulp novel on the screen,the screenplay by Hossein and Daniel Hortis slices brittle melodrama with an impending Fim Noir doom.Keeping the body count at 0,the writers exchange gunfights for explosive Film Noir dialogue,which is centred around giving the fragile relationships a psychological depth,due to the arrival of outsider Menda opening everything that has remained silent between the Lecain,as they each find out that night is not for sleep.

More "Riviera noir" as Robert Hossein directs and stars in a suspenseful "romantic" thriller that predicts the dysfunctional family dynamics of Robert Aldrich's WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? a half-decade later.Canned TV personality Pierre Menda blew his last dime at the Nice casinos and hits the road on foot where he's offered a ride by a mysterious blonde in a white car and mink coat. He can't make out her face in the shadows but it doesn't matter once she pulls over and opens her coat to reveal that's all she's got on. They have sex and when it's over, she kicks him out of the car and tries to run him down but luckily Pierre manages to get the woman's license plate number before she speeds off into the night. This clue eventually leads him to a waterfront mansion where two blonde sisters live, one demure and the other vivacious despite being confined to a wheelchair. Neither one seems likely to be the wanton that raped him but curious nonetheless, he accepts their invitation to stay the night and it's not long before the sisters offer him a job, a place to live, and their love. Uh oh.A throbbing jazz score and a bitterly ironic twist at the end top off what looks to be a reel family affair: director Hossein adapted his friend Frédéric Dard's pulp novel and co-starred with his wife, Marina Vlady, and sister-in-law Odile Versois. His father, André Hossein, composed the music.

"Toi le Venin" is Robert Hossein's masterpiece,and one of the great thrillers of the fifties.Based on a Frederic Dard novel,a writer the director often worked with (see also "le Monte-Charge" which Hossein did not direct but in which he was the lead too),the screenplay grabs you from the first pictures on a desert road by night where a beautiful blonde might be the fieriest of the criminals to the mysterious house where he finds his femme fatale ..and her sister.Then begins a cat and mouse play .One of the sisters is in a wheelchair .But is she really disabled?Which one is the criminal who tried to kill the hero on that night? The two actresses,Marina Vlady and the late Odile Versois were sisters.Turn off all the lights before watching.Highly suspenseful.

A man looks for the mysterious young lady who tried to crush him one evening One night, while he promenades in the streets of Nice, Victor Menda is accosted by a fair young lady in the steering wheel of Cadillac. The attractive creature, whose face stays in the shadow, invites Victor to rise, give herself fervently to him then stick him the cannon of a revolver on the temple and order him to get off. While he goes away, she tries to crush him. Victor just escapes death. Furious, he has the reflex to note the number of the car. A fast inquiry leads him around a big house where live two very resembling sisters, both fair.