The feminist and socialist Germaine Dulac initially worked in political journalism before devoting herself entirely to the new medium of film in 1915 at the age of 33 and travelling the path from Impressionism to Surrealism in the 1920s. With ‘La souriante Madame Beudet’, a feminist variation on Madame Bovary, Dulac created a prime example of an impressionist film, a visual symphony that operates with fades, blurs, plays of light, deforming prisms and unusual camera angles.

In a popular cabaret in Marseille's Old Port, the owner Topinelli and his wife Sarah fill the glasses of the regulars. A troupe of sailors returning from the Orient arrives, settles in and shows off the relics they have brought back from their voyage. The filles de joie flock to the party, the alcohol flows freely and the fever rises. It was Thoreau who said that the masses of men lead lives of quiet desperation. It is in the spirit of this pessimistic observation that Louis Delluc assembles his motley collection of the world’s misfits in a sleazy Marseilles bar.