(Une si jolie petite plage) Gérard Philipe evokes a palpable tension between suspicion and sympathy as a melancholy young man returning to the pretty little beach of his childhood, the beach (and the childhood) now enshrouded in rain and mist. The story of his past unfolds in present-time: beautifully, and without the use of flashbacks, monologue or explanation, his reasons for returning are revealed to the residents of an isolated inn. Yves Allégret's films of the late forties are among the best film noirs made anywhere: highly atmospheric, they recall the mood of "poetic fatalism" which permeated the great films of Carné-Prévert in the late thirties, but the Allégret noir avoids all arty flourishes and eccentricities in building tension and in pitilessly revealing the dark side of human behavior.