If Swedish master Ingmar Bergman had made a film noir, it might look and feel something like L’accident (US: The Accident), the final film from French director Edmond T. Gréville set on a gray, dreary island off the coast of Brittany much like Bergman’s island of Fårö, his favorite setting. Like so many Bergman works, the film contrasts interior desperation with exterior simplicity, including a variety of nonprofessional extras (Gréville used actual island locals) and the minimalist, orchestral score reduced to a few romantic Tchaikovsky symphonies. When a pretty, young schoolteacher named Andréa (Magali Noël) arrives, her presence lodges a metaphorical wedge in the already troubled marriage of schoolmaster Julien (Georges Rivière) and his alcoholic wife Françoise (Danik Patisson). Despite earnest attempts at resistance, Andréa eventually gives in to Julien’s desires and the two engage in an affair right under the hawk-eyed watch of Françoise, whose insecurity and jealousy combine into a quiet(ish) desperation with lethal consequences. With occasional nods to Christianity (the bite of a serpent, the shelter of a chapel), Gréville paints the atmosphere on thick, the rocky island rarely without a howling wind or the lapping sound of waves, Andréa’s leaky, decrepit cabin barely accommodating the flicker of her fireplace, the dilapidated school setting possibly inspired by Clouzot’s Diabolique (1955). Roland Lesaffre plays a roving village idiot who shrieks about the Chinese threat while obsessing over Andréa to the point of breaking into her cabin and watching her undress.