A young doctor is asked by her husband to choose between her profession and her family.

"Taking its title from John Keats’s early 19th-century poem, this highly personal melodrama finds Dulac interrogating the archetype of the femme fatale. La belle dame sans merci follows a famous actress who was once seduced and abandoned by a rich man and subsequently resolved to become a “merciless woman,” forever scheming to hurt others (men in particular) in a ruthless yet captivating manner. Dulac challenges the Romantic archetype embodied in Keats’s poem by way of symbolist mise en scène, self-reflexive narration, and her typically associative approach to editing, locating a modern ambiguity within the stereotypical figures of 19th-century art." - Film Society of Lincoln Center

On his way out of a wedding, a young boy named Peachskin finds a jewel by chance. Bringing it back to its owner, she becomes his benefactress in the years that pass.

A French washerwoman becomes a duchess and a friend of Napoleon.