Cocteau admired and adored Piaf. He wrote two monologues about her: "The Ghost of Marseille" and "The Beautiful Indifferent." In the latter, Cocteau tightrope-walks and psychoanalyzes between the "underworld" and "our respectable world."

In "The Beautiful Indifferent," he extracts all the feelings of a prostitute for her gigolo. A being among those unfortunate enough to be born into misery, lost from the very beginning of their lives, who clings to a gigolo in order to continue living. All the tender, primitive, passionate feelings of a lost soul. From "our respectable society," which expresses all its existential anxiety and dependency, to another lost soul that is completely indifferent. The outcast of society, pushed into the mud by the hypocrisy of this "respectable and serious society."