After Marcel Blistène 's doomed "LE FEU DANS LA PEAU" ,its three leads ,Philippe Lemaire ,Raymond Pellegrin and his real-life wife Gisèle Pascal team up again for "MARCHANDES D 'ILLUSIONS ;less doomed ,it attracts some interest .
Sister Marie -Thérèse tries to save the prostitutes doomed to a sad fate ;she is dressed in civilian clothes ,to be able to infiltrate those shady rings .
She meets two streetwalkers ,Marcelle (Louise Carletti ) and Maria(Nicole Courcel) , who are in love with two honest men ,an painter and his best friend .
But the girls pretend they work by night in a post office .Both still believe they can find love with a good man.
An old hooker is killed by a pimp ,and Marcelle is a suspect .The painter could provide her with an alibi,but she does not want him to testify in her favor,for he would know who she really is.....That's sister Marie-Thérèse 's dilemma:shall she urge the prisoner to tell the superintendent the truth (which would clear her) or shall she conceal the poor girl's secret?
The male principals (the good guys) have a relative short screen time ,and one of them (the painter) is not exactly what he claims to be ( a clue is given to the viewer in his first scene though)and Philippe Lemaire's last scene is unexpected -whereas Pellegrin' s is routine melodrama .
Unlike Joannon and Cloche ,his closer competitors in the field ,André does not pass over in silence the reasons why these girls have become women of the night ,there's no "daring " scenes in which the viewer can get an eyeful,and ,in spite of sister Marie-Therese's laudable work ,it's only half a happy end ,if one should say so .The Centrale Catholique Du Cinema made no mistake when they approved of the movie : the place where the sister takes her protégées ,"Le Nid" (=the nest) is a Christian home where they can start it all over again.
André's follow-up, "LES CLANDESTINES " , broached the prostitution world again ,but it was given a more film noir treatment (this side was also present in "MARCHANDES D'ILLUSION " ,notably the pimp's crime and his death )
