The Room Upstairs (Martin Roumagnac)

synopsis

Lacombe's tragic postwar romance is a tale of class anxiety and classic Romantic fatalism, run through with a typically French frankness (for the times...) about sex and gender. Gabin is the titular character, an unpretentious and proudly working class building contractor, who falls in love with Dietrich's ravishing shopgirl Blanche, quite unaware that she comes trailing a notorious history and attracts the determined ardor of every man she meets. Among her current lovers (the American title was The Room Upstairs) is a local politician who plans on marrying Blanche once his terminally ill wife dies, but Gabin's sensible lug doesn't care, though it's clear that the ever-opportunistic Blanche will choose wealth over love. Until she doesn't.