The success of Les anges du péché enabled Bresson to work with an impressive array of talent for his second film. He collaborated on the screenplay with Jean Cocteau and cast the great Maria Casarès as the lead. The film derives its story from an episode in Diderot’s Jacques le Fataliste (but moved to the present day) in which a spurned woman revenges herself on her former lover by manipulating him into falling in love with a woman who, unbeknownst to him, is a prostitute. Made during the war but released afterward, the film was no great success although it was championed by the great critic André Bazin, who recognized in Bresson a fusion of realism and a spiritual style. Later, Godard would claim that Les dames was “the only film of the French Resistance,” due to its exploration of the problem of evil and the struggle against it. – DP