Although it was never released in this country, for many British and French critics Lumière d'été stands alongside Children of Paradise as a masterpiece of French cinema made during the German Occupation. A remote mountain inn is the setting for a class-crossed love affair, in a melodrama that climbs to a violent climax on tensions built into Jacques Prévert's script and echoed in Grémillon's charged imagery. Michèle (Madeleine Robinson), a beautiful innocent engaged to a dissolute artist (Pierre Brasseur), falls in love with a young construction worker from a nearby dam project (Georges Marchal); she is in turn pursued by an aging playboy (Paul Bernard). Lumière d'été is a study of two worlds: the working class, pictured as healthy and cohesive, and the rich-idle, self-pitying, and debauched. Its critique, reminiscent of Renoir's Rules of the Game, did not escape the notice of Vichy censors, and the film was banned for the duration.