Eifersucht (1925)

The married couple Marthe and Georges Ménard have just been to the theater to see a new play by a mutual friend, Pierre de Ronceray. The play is about a love triangle and the great, all-consuming force of jealousy, which also takes hold of its protagonists. At the end of the play, the husband strangles his wife, whom he suspects of infidelity. Afterwards, Georges talks with Pierre and makes fun of what he considers the play’s nonsensical and unconvincing ending. Georges claims that no sophisticated man in this day and age would behave that way and strangle his wife out of jealousy. Pierre takes Georges’s criticism as a challenge and wants to conduct an experiment on the couple: Is the supposedly perfect marriage between Marthe and Georges really safe from jealous fits and their terrible consequences? Marthe, too, doubts that her husband’s supposedly jealousy-proof rationality is all it’s made out to be. So they decide to put it to the test. First, Marthe has flowers sent to her. No one knows who sent them or why. The first doubts take root in Georges: What if Marthe has a lover and he doesn’t know about it? But Pierre de Ronceray also sows seeds of doubt in Marthe. She finds a small blond lock of hair in her husband’s pocket watch. It cannot possibly belong to his wife, who wears a fashionable short dark hairstyle. Could her husband have a mistress? Marthe, too, now has to admit that she is not immune to jealousy. Her husband now wants to know the truth, and follows his wife when she goes into town for a stroll. Georges sees Marthe talking to a child, who calls her “Mama” as they part. Could Marthe secretly be a mother? And if so, who is the father? Jealousy now boils up inside Georges Ménard, despite his grand claims just a short time earlier that he was immune to it, and that it was beneath a modern man in this day and age. But soon the doubts take on a strange life of their own, and emotions rise to a fever pitch. In a fit of that very jealousy, Georges throws his wife to the ground and begins to strangle her, just like the protagonist in Pierre’s play. At the last moment, their friend Pierre, the playwright, arrives, intervenes, and prevents a crime of passion. Pierre then explains everything to Georges and Marthe, and they realize that they have been part of an experiment. They understand that no one is entirely immune to jealousy, but also that mutual trust should be the foundation of every relationship and every successful marriage.