Charles Vanel, one of France's best loved film stars, wrote, directed and starred in Dans la nuit. Being one of the last French silents, its run was apparently short-lived, but at least one contemporary critic compared Dans la nuit to works by Gremillon and Dupont. What starts out a lark turns into a complex drama when wedding festivities (for Vanel and Sandra Milowanoff) are marred by an explosion. The husband is disfigured-thus Vanel spends the rest of this starring vehicle behind a mask, which is only the outward manifestation of an intrigue of masked identities in a love triangle. Vanel creates a wonderfully effective atmosphere of first dream, then nightmare reality. Vanel directed one other film, Au joli coin, in 1932, re-released in 1935 as Le Coup de minuit.