Ophuls’ penultimate film is actually a remarkable triptych: three separate segments, all drawn from de Maupassant and all demonstrating that the “pleasure” of the title is not at all the same thing as “happiness.” Bookended between two devastating vignettesis Le plaisir’s central and longest section, which movingly tells the simple story of the star-crossed meeting between a farmer and a prostitute. In contrast are the film’s opening segment, in which vigorous and joyous movement – captured by the ceaseless movement of Ophuls’ camera – metamorphoses into a dance of death, and the film’s conclusion, which reveals the fatality of pleasure when it gives way to boredom.