Along with"la ferme des sept péchés" , the best film Jean Devaivre offered .Both movies are basically murder mysteries ,verging on whodunit ,both include flashbacks and "la dame d'onze heures" begins in a very intriguing and engaging way : it is as though the director summarized mysterious events and estimating the affair too complex for his audience, he plays it backwards and starts all over again ; hence the absence of cast and credits (which appear at the very end ,like most of today's movie)

Stanislas Octave Seminario, an explorer back from Africa ,is confronted to a series of murders and becomes an occasional detective (everyone calls him SOS ); the plot is complex, sometimes muddled , but the director creates a threatening offbeat atmosphere : hints at an "eleven o' clock lady" , anonymous letters , the ruins of a town destroyed in the war, a conjurer who knows one of the member of his audience's name and predicts he 's going to die the day after , the lady in the morgue who resembles his sister ,the cemetery where the undertaker paints crosses with names of people who are not dead yet , a gloomy hospital with a shady doctor and his strange nurse .....

Blending melodrama with murder mystery (beware of staphylococcus!) ,it leaves some space for comic relief, humor,thanks to the indefatigable Jean Tissier as the servant who enjoys eavesdropping (a role in he would take on in Devaivre 's latter "l'inspecteur aime la bagarre " , but in a more tongue- in- cheek work) and has some funny lines :" in this place ,all the animals are raw !(before they are cooked of course!) " or "this keyhole doesn't work :I cannot see clearly" !"