Bette Davis back again, from the year previous to the previous film reviewed, with a character twenty years younger, a governess in the household of Charles Boyer, a duke in the Bourbon restoration, just before the revolution of 1848. A genuine star, always a sight to behold, she supplies most of the interest in this overstuffed film from Anatole Litvak. Boyer obviously got his role in this film based on Mayerling, also revolving around a murder/suicide, but here his performance is stiff and lacks dimension. The film’s provenance in a popular novel, one of the infinite progeny of Jane Eyre, makes for a shapeless, baggy, draggy melodrama, with some good elements that might show through better if it were a half-hour shorter. And what does that title refer to anyway? (1940, TCM/T, n.) *5+*
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