Deeply, deeply strange. It must have been a hit of some sort when it first appeared in 1943 since Joan Fontaine was nominated for the Best Actress Oscar but now it's hard to imagine this extremely old-fashioned load of twaddle having an audience of any kind. It was based on a book and then a play and set in some strange studio-based Swtizerland and then in some strange studio-based London where French avant-garde composer Charles Boyer lives with his rich, spoilt wife Alexis Smith while her sickly schoolgirl cousin, (a very overage Fontaine), pines for him.I think it's meant to be a 'women's picture' or romantic drama of the kind director Edmund Goulding was famous for but it's much too bizarre to be engaging on any level while a supporting cast that includes Peter Lorre, May Whitty and Charles Coburn is totally wasted. It's never revived which is perfectly understandable and is nobody's finest hour though in its favour, it's too terrible to be actually boring.
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