When she made her début in the 1930s, Danielle Darrieux personified those spontaneous young women who faced down adversity with courage and energy. In other words, her temperament was fitting for the gloom of her times: it was the perfect answer to the crisis of the era. In 1934, in Bad Seed by Billy Wilder, her character falls in with a gang of car thieves, who use her as bait to lure in unwitting drivers. In the film, she plays a typist who finds herself driven to take up this dirty work. The theme of the economic crisis is treated elsewhere in her screen appearances, despite the apparent levity of her subject matter: Danielle Darrieux represents those women who refuse to be brought down by the difficulties they face. In the same year, she appeared in The Crisis is Over by Robert Siodmak, in which she sings a duet with Albert Préjean, although on the record she performs the music of the film with Pierre Mingand. The song The Crisis is Over is a particularly spirited foxtrot which takes its inspiration from the American musicals of the era.
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