After marrying a dour and disinterested lord for status, a young woman falls in love with a stage actor while her best friend from boarding school enters an affair with her husband.
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CinemaSerf
6
By CinemaSerf
James Mason is the spoiled, somewhat ruthless "Marquis of Rohan" who alights on the charming, if naive, "Clarissa" (Phyllis Calvert) and decides she is to be the mother of his heir. That's all he wants from her. No love or romance - just so long as he gets a child. She grew up with "Hester" (Margaret Lockwood) and when many years later, sees her acting in a play, she asks her to come and live with her in her palatial London home. Her infrequent visitor husband, accepts the idea on the basis that he will have a new playmate and soon the manipulative "Hester" is no longer content to be the mistress, but wants the title too. Add to the mix the gallant "Rokeby" (Stewart Granger), a man who has the measure of the venal and ambitious woman and we have a character driven period drama that moves along quite well for 90 minutes. Mason features sparingly, indeed it is the two ladies who drive much of the intrigue here, and for the most part - though the pace can be terribly slow at times - they do a decent job. The scenes at the end have stayed with me since I first saw this film 45 years ago, and are still pretty chilling. It's very much of it's time, this film. There are scenes and characterisations that don't sit so well 80 years on, but it has a more substantial story than many dramas of it's ilk and is worth watching.
