The innocuous title hides a much darker story. In a park one sunny day, Dr. Leslie Yates (Australian actor Alan Marshal, who recalls a more mannerly Errol Flynn) has a chance meeting with his former love, the blonde and polished writer Doris Wilding (Helen Vinson). It's been years since they've seen each other, and they're now married to other people: he to simple but loyal Helen (Barbara Read), and she to Paul (Patric Knowles), a courtly sophisticate whose witticisms barely contain his bitterness. They've both married inadequate partners, but do they have the courage to face the truth? Does it justify hurting their innocent spouses? And despite the passion they still feel for each other, what about the way they hurt each other in the past? Screenwriter S.K. Lauren, who also wrote the original play this picture was based on, also penned von Sternberg's Marlene Dietrich vehicle Blonde Venus (1934). His bittersweet awareness of human behavior in and out of erotic obsession brings an uncomfortable poignancy to an otherwise routine sojourn down the road not taken.

By Violet LeVoit