His friends the Zborowskis do their best to keep him afloat, but his fragile health, weakened by constant alcohol and tobacco, gives out and he is sent to Nice to recuperate.

Returning to Paris, the Zborowskis arrange a one-man show in the prestigious gallery of Madame Weill, where everybody turns up for free drinks at the opening but nobody buys.

Despondent at his inability to combine the quest for beauty in his paintings of Beatrice and Jeanne with any commercial reality, and with his health increasingly feeble, he goes round cafés trying without success to sell his drawings.

Without telling her what has happened, Morel rushes round to a delighted Jeanne to buy up all unsold works for immediate cash.

The film was originally to be directed by Max Ophüls, but while preparing the project, he died of rheumatic heart disease.