The Rat is a 1925 British silent film drama, directed by Graham Cutts and starring Ivor Novello, Mae Marsh and Isabel Jeans.

The film is based on the 1924 play of the same title written by Novello and Constance Collier, set in the Parisian criminal underworld.

Zélie de Chaumet (Jeans) is a bored, sensation-seeking demimondaine, living with her older lover and keeper Herman Stetz (Robert Scholz) in a lavish apartment in a wealthy area of Paris.

By contrast career criminal Pierre Boucheron (Novello), known as The Rat, lives with his casual girlfriend Odile (Marsh) in a run-down room in a squalid part of the city.

Pierre also attends the Folies Bergère that evening on the lookout for easy pickings, and steals Zélie's cigarette case.

Watching Pierre win a knife fight and performing a wild Apache dance with one of the club's showgirls, she is intrigued and strikes up a conversation with him.

Pierre is refused permission to visit Odile in prison, and becomes increasingly distressed and tormented, taking to wandering the streets in a near-hysterical state.