Le bonheur

Philippe Lutcher caricatures his famous contemporaries in an anarchist newspaper, under the pseudonym Chakal. The day Clara Stuart, the star of the stage and the screen, returns to France, he is in the crowd who has come to welcome him and "crunches" the star, without his knowing it. Later, Clara, in her dressing room, did not appreciate the caricaturist's fierce pencil stroke. But her immediate entourage - Malpiaz, the impresario who watches over her interests and especially the Prince of Choppé, her husband who loves and protects her - like the public - who makes a triumph for her return concert - preserve her from all serious questioning about her identity as a woman, which she readily confuses with her image of a star. Philippe attends the concert with a friend, Louise, and despite all his contempt for Clara, cannot repress her emotion when she sings her favorite song, "Happiness". At the end of the theater, he hurts a revolver with the one that so that he will say it at the Assizes where he is accused of attempted murder, symbolizes in his eyes of revolt the decadence of a society which needs 'idols to survive. Against all odds, Clara asks the jurors to forgive her "murderer" after a vibrant plea which looks like it can be mistaken for a tragedy act. Sentenced to a symbolic punishment, Philippe is greeted upon his release from prison by a Clara whose sincerity makes him forget the actress for the benefit of women. An idyll is tied between these two beings that everything seemed to separate. The strength of their love convinces even the Prince of Choppé - yet deeply bruised by the betrayal of his wife - to fade. Clara makes a film: we see a man shooting a movie star there. It is thus, thinks Philippe, that Clara lives their passion like a fiction, a film. Henceforth, this is how he will love Clara, the image on the white screen of cinemas, these temples of dreams, where happiness and love are eternal.