Paris, 1938: The German doctor Ravic works illegally as a surgeon for a French doctor. He lives in a hotel for emigrants and attends to French prostitutes. His wife was tortured to death by the Nazis, but he managed to escape from a concentration camp. Ravic has repressed his past, even his own name. Only his love for the singer Joan Madou gives him a new enthusiasm for life and a fresh outlook. By chance he catches a glimpse on the street of Haake, his wife’s murderer, who tortured him as well. Ravic is obsessed with the idea of revenge. He plans the murder of Haake and finally carries it out. In the process, Ravic doesn’t notice how Joan Madou slips away from him; she dies at the hands of her new lover. When the Second World War breaks out and France is at war with Germany, Ravic is interned as an enemy alien; in the early morning haze even the Arc de Triomphe can no longer be made out – it’s a multilayered symbol for monumental human hubris. Europe has descended once and for all into the darkness of barbarity.