Entrée des Artistes is set at the Paris Conservatoire (France's prestigious State acting school) and combines thriller-drama with a much-praised documentary focus on the actors' world (presented as an ambivalence between fantasy and reality). Louis Jouvet is ideally cast as the acting teacher (he in fact was a teacher at the Conservatoire), and heads a distinguished cast. Director Marc Allégret's career was significantly involved in both the documentary field and the acting field: he is the director who “discovered” Brigitte Bardot, Gérard Philipe, Michele Morgan, and Josephine Baker, among others.