Phyllis Calvert speaks obliquely with Mother Superior Helen Haye about something terrible. We then jump forward in time to a scene in which she and super-wealthy husband John Stuart are awaiting the return of their daughter, Patricia Roc. Things go along swimmingly for a while. Miss Roc wears shorts hangs out with the arty set, and the staid Miss Calvert attempts to bond with her. Then, after about 40 minutes of this, we hear a theremin. Miss Calvert puts a handkerchief over her head and goes to the slums, where she reunites with lover Stewart Granger, with apparently never a memory of her other life. Stuart confesses to Miss Roc that mummy has disappeared before. Miss Roc goes looking for Miss Calvert.
It took me several minutes to realize that this was all set in Florence, such was the posh manner in which everyone spoke and dressed. It's only when a character showed up wearing a biretta that I twigged; such are the conventions of the era that no one seemed to notice that Miss Calvert was only four months older than Miss Roc. Neither is whatever trauma led Miss Calvert to this odd double life ever explained, even though the opening titles insist that there was a real person who went through this.
That said, Arthur Crabtree's first movie as director is typically lush Gainsborough piffle of the era, with the ex-cinematographer supervising Jack Cox's camerawork through several sumptuous sequences. The cast is strong, as it needed to be to put over this nonsense, including Peter Glenville, Dulcie Gray, and Jean Kent.
While the holes in the story -- mandated, no doubt, by the censors --annoy me, there's no doubt that this is fine commercial film-making. Still, it's not a movie I'll be revisiting.
It took me several minutes to realize that this was all set in Florence, such was the posh manner in which everyone spoke and dressed. It's only when a character showed up wearing a biretta that I twigged; such are the conventions of the era that no one seemed to notice that Miss Calvert was only four months older than Miss Roc. Neither is whatever trauma led Miss Calvert to this odd double life ever explained, even though the opening titles insist that there was a real person who went through this.
That said, Arthur Crabtree's first movie as director is typically lush Gainsborough piffle of the era, with the ex-cinematographer supervising Jack Cox's camerawork through several sumptuous sequences. The cast is strong, as it needed to be to put over this nonsense, including Peter Glenville, Dulcie Gray, and Jean Kent.
While the holes in the story -- mandated, no doubt, by the censors --annoy me, there's no doubt that this is fine commercial film-making. Still, it's not a movie I'll be revisiting.