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The French La Rue Sans Nom (Street Without A Name) was officially based on a novel by Marcel Ayme. In style and substance, however, it more closely resembled G. W. Pabst's 1925 silent classic The Joyless Street. The setting is a sordid Parisian neighborhood, rife with crime and corruption. Into this cesspool steps the heroine, whose beauty drives the local male population wild. As it turns out, her beauty is a curse, bringing even more tragedy and deprivation upon the already blighted neighborhood. La Rue Sans Nom was the second directorial effort by Pierre Chenal, who went on to helm such melodramatic masterpieces as Crime and Punishment (1935) and L'Alibi (1937).