Jean Dalbe

Womanizer Don Mateo helps a girl in a train when attacked by a other woman. This girl, Conchita - a cigarette maker, soon visits the rich Don Mateo at his palace in Sevillia. He falls for her, but she likes to play with him.

This is the romanticized story of Louise de Bettignies, who was a spy and heroin of the First World War. In October 1914, in Roubaix, Geneviève de Vandeville delivers mail in secret. Brilliant and effective, she is soon contacted by the Intelligence Service who asks her to lead a team of spies. Geneviève, who is responsible for delivering intelligence from dangerous regions, enlists the help of Maria, a young girl who becomes her friend. Maria and her lover ask Geneviève to plan their escape into Holland. This mission will prove fatal for Geneviève. She is detected by the German counterespionage, arrested, and imprisoned in Brussels. She becomes sick and dies in prison before the war ends. Some time later, Maria and her lover pay their respects to the monument in effigy of Louise de Bettignies.

This relatively straightforward dramatic biography was one of two films commissioned to honor Joan of Arc on the 500th anniversary of her death, but it was soon undeservedly relegated to obscurity in favor of Carl Dreyer's triumphant 'La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc'. The comparison is unfair: Dreyer was an artist, but director Marco de Gastyne certainly proved himself a distinguished craftsman, and his emphasis on the Maid of Orléans early life in Domrémy serves as a picturesque, matching bookend to Dreyer's impassioned courtroom drama.