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La Vie de Bohème is adapted from Henri Murger's libretto for Giacomo Puccini's opera La Bohème with the Puccini music relegated to the background. Louis Jourdan plays Rudolphe, the "starving artist" who falls in love with the beautiful but sickly Mimi (Maria Denis). As the tragic Rudolphe-Mimi romance plays itself out to its inevitable conclusion, director Marcel L'Herbier occasionally shifts focus to such supporting characters as painters Marcel (André Roussin), Schaunard (Alfred Adam), the philosophical Colline (Louis Salou), and the fun-loving Phemie (Suzy Delair). Some newly added scenes flesh out the character of Musette (Gisèle Pascal), tracing her progress from wealth to penury and wealth again. Perhaps the most famous filmization of this story is the 1926 La Bohème, starring Lillian Gish and John Gilbert.