Une voiture roule à vive allure dans la région de la Dombes, située au nord de Lyon, célèbre pour ses étangs et ses élevages de chevaux. Une femme semble fuir un homme qui la traque mais la nature, bien loin de l'accueillir, démultiplie son angoisse panique.

Pialat's first film was the short Isabelle aux Dombes, shot in 1951 when the director was 26 years old. The film is an entirely silent montage of documentary footage, ragged experimental techniques — mainly some negative-image inserts — and symbolic psychodrama that's surprisingly not too different from the work that Stan Brakhage would begin making just a year or two later. Images of death proliferate throughout the film, and what started as a loose documentary soon becomes an eerie psuedo-horror piece that's obsessed with death and decay.