This Is the Night

While on the way to the theater in Paris with her lover, Gerald Gray, Claire Mathewson loses her skirt in a limousine door to the delight of the crowd in the street. Arriving home in her slip, Claire is met by her husband Stephen, a javelin thrower supposed to be in Los Angeles for the Olympics, who has just discovered that Claire is planning a rendezvous in Venice. Caught in their lie, Gerald and Claire insist the trip was for two couples and Gerald sets out to find himself a wife. He hires the starving and respectable Germaine, believing that she is Chou-Chou, a sophisticated and glamorous actress. Once in Venice, Germaine and Gerald make love at breakfast and Claire becomes jealous, demanding that the actress leave Venice. Germaine, however, refuses to relinquish her fantasy of a romantic, extravagant Venetian vacation. Meanwhile, Stephen spends the afternoon with "Mrs. Gray" while Gerald and his friend Bunny get drunk, both believing they love the actress. That night, Bunny arrives drunk to take Germaine out in a gondola and Gerald intervenes, ordering Germaine to stay home. Then, as a gondolier sings in the moonlight, Gerald kisses her, but Germaine, tired of the façade, runs to her room, where she cries that she is not spectacular like Chou-Chou, but is respectable and wants only to be herself. Meanwhile, Claire, jealous of the actress' attentions toward Stephen, goes to Gerald's room to make sure Chou-Chou has left town, and Gerald tells his mistress she has fallen back in love with her husband. Bunny then falls off Germaine's balcony into the canal and Stephen, thinking that he is a prowler, rushes in to save Germaine. Claire and Gerald, finding Stephen in Germaine's room, fly into a rage, believing the actress is living up to Chou-Chou's bad reputation. Gerald then admits Germaine is not his wife, and Stephen admits he knew all along. When the police arrive with the soaked Bunny, Stephen is cleared of Claire's suspicion and they are reconciled. While Germaine leaves the hotel in a gondola, Bunny tells Gerald that Germaine replaced Chou-Chou, and Gerald runs after Germaine. As the gondolier sings, Gerald proposes to Germaine in the moonlight. (texte officiel du distributeur)