Special thanks to Wanda Sherratt for French translation!
Synopsis:
Tu m'appartiens! (You Belong To Me!)
In a miscarriage of justice, Burat is wrongly sentenced to hard labor. But one day he manages to escape, and, using false documents, returns to France. Using the name Laussade, he rises through hard work and his talent for business to the position of president of an important shipping company. He marries and is happy – the past is blissfully forgotten. Then, the night before the 20-year statute of limitations on serving his crime is due to expire, which will free him forever, Laussade is terrified to notice police closing in on all sides. A mysterious, shadowy woman has spun a crafty web about him. As a result, he has 24 hours to flee the pursuers who are on his trail, or else be captured and taken back to prison.
That evening, on board one of the transatlantic liners of the “Ocean” Maritime Company, a banquet is being held, presided over by Laussade, to celebrate 300 years of the company’s existence. The crowd is electrified by the entrance of Gisele, a glamorous world-traveler well known in Marseilles society.
It is she who has woven the dark net around Laussade, and police officers interspersed among the guests intend to arrest him this very evening.
But something disrupts this carefully-laid plan: Convict #32.732, a poor coal-cutter and a former prisoner with Burat on the chain gang, who warns him and helps him to escape.
When they are safe on the outskirts of Marseilles, Burat asks him:
“Why did you save me?”
“You’ll know soon enough.”
“But how did you know my name?”
“Don’t your recognize me? Remember, we escaped from prison….”
Now Burat remembers. Once again, he sees the little tavern where he’d ended up one evening, after his escape. He sees the tavern-keeper’s niece, to whom he’d pledged eternal love. But then a longing for home seized him. He caught a lift with some sailors who were passing through, and left her, saying, “I’ve got a job cutting wood. I’ll be back in a few days.”
And he never returned.
Now Burat is facing Gisele.
“You wretch! I’m the one who has put the police on your trail!”
“What have I ever done to you?”
“You don’t remember, do you? I told you, “You’re everything to me! I waited for you, I believed you with all my heart…and you never came back. Then I decided to take revenge. I searched for you everywhere, all over the world. You were the one who killed my heart. I had to find you again, and now I HAVE found you.”
“What do you want from me?”
“I want you to come away with me! Or else I’ll call the police. Decide now.”
“But I’m a married man. It’s impossible.”
“You’ve made your choice.”
And Gisele grabs the telephone.
“Hello, police? This is the Villa Thalassa. Come at once, I’ve got…”
She breaks off.
“No, I can’t do it. I still love you.”
It is the man, who seizes the phone and cries,
“Come quickly. It’s me…Burat!”
“You fool, what have you done?”
Burat, smiling, looks at her.
‘The danger is over now,” he says. “The statute has expired. I am free.”
When the police arrive, Gisele herself tells them that the victim she had promised them has escaped for good.
Now an uncertain Burat faces this woman who is studying his every move, listening, one might almost say, to the stirrings of his heart.
“You are right,” he tells her suddenly. “After the way I hurt you, I owe it to you to leave with you. There’s a Spanish cargo ship we can take; I know the captain.”
They leave the villa together to return to Marseilles.
“That’s where I used to live,” says Burat softly, as they pass the house containing his wife and child.
His whole new life passes before him at that moment – all his life of toil and honesty, his Herculean struggle to reach the lofty position he holds today. There was the promise of happiness at the side of a devoted, loving wife, with a beloved son. A wave of regret and shame fills his heart at the thought of the desertion he is committing. He cannot hold out any longer.
“I have to go over there,” he says abruptly. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
He goes up to the bedroom, where he finds his wife leaning over the bed where a child – his son – is sleeping…and Gisele continues to wait for him in vain.
