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La Beauté sur la terre (1927) features Juliette, a young orphan born in Cuba, who comes to the shores of Lake Geneva to be with the last remaining member of her family: her uncle Milliquet, a café owner. When she appears before the villagers, it’s like a revelation: Beauty among men. Juliette quickly becomes the object of fascinated and oppressive stares. The jealous Mme Milliquet throws the young woman out and she takes refuge with Rouge, a lonely fisherman who restores his house for her. Life proceeds peacefully, until Ravinet, a Savoyard employed at the gravel pit, tries to seize the young woman and rape her—a violent episode after which events come to a head. The final scene is one of chaos: as Juliette leaves the village, mysteriously disappearing into the night, and Ravinet sets fire to Rouge’s house out of rage at not having been able to make beauty his own. Men have proved incapable of receiving beauty, and as a result find themselves all the more divided and unhappy than they were before its coming.