Erich Maria Remarque's postwar best-seller deals with refugees from Hitler's Germany living in Paris on borrowed time in the moment before all of European culture would crumble into war. In filming it, Lewis Milestone captures the bleak atmosphere of failed lives in a failing society. The story tells of the doomed romance between an unemployed showgirl (Ingrid Bergman) and a fugitive German doctor (Charles Boyer) who is obsessed with stalking the Nazi official (Charles Laughton) responsible for his wife's death. Dennis Jakob writes, "Arch of Triumph is (Russian emigré Lewis Milestone's) nostalgic view of Paris. A really legitimate Paris, for once. A Paris of the mind.... (It) is also one of the very great noirs. Light and dark, good and evil, matters of life and death are all here, and as in any good noir, they all exchange places when activated by Destiny." Tonight's restored print from the UCLA Film Archives represents the most complete version in existence.