This early classic of surrealism is legendary for the notorious riot supposedly instigated by scriptwriter Antonin Artaud at the film's premiere. Artaud was disappointed with Dulac's "oneiric interpretation" of what for him was anything but a dream. In a new interpretation, Richard Abel (French Cinema: The First Wave) both debunks the legend and offers an appreciation of the way Dulac in fact carried through the writer's conception of "'a film of pure images' developing 'a series of states of mind'.... (a film of) 'obvious incoherence' and 'merciless cruelty.'" The slight plot revolves around the sexual torments of a celibate priest whose illicit love for a beautiful confessee is displayed in the eponymous seashell which reappears in many facets. Abel writes, "The discourse of this narrative works...to produce a sense of spatial and temporal disorientation...a different kind of continuity through discontinuity.... In contrast to Dulac's previous films...here the very concept of the subjective is called into question and the narrative subject put into crisis...." Moreover, in replacing Artaud, who with his severity and powerful allure was to have portrayed the priest, with Alex Allin, something of a schlemiel, it has been suggested that Dulac slyly infused Artaud's script with her own critique of male fetishism. Merciless cruelty, indeed.