by Hal Erickson
synopsis
Arletty heads the cast of this first film version of Jean-Paul Sartre's existential theater piece No Exit. The scene is a tawdry hotel room in Limbo, where several damned souls are gathered. At first, the group fails to comprehend where they are or why they're there. When the horrible truth dawns upon them, they carp and snipe at one another, blaming everyone but themselves for their dismal fate. The Sartre original had only one setting and three characters. Pierre Laroche's screenplay unnecessarily "opens up" the play, adding four more characters and several sequences in the "real" world. A more successful (but no more faithful) version of No Exit was filmed in Argentina in 1962.
