Blonde Nancy (returning home from Paris) and Robin (a young American seeing Europe) meet on a cruise returning to England, and make tentative plans to meet again. Nancy's home is a beautiful estate in Devon, filmed on elaborate Gothic interior sets designed by Hitchcock. Maurice Brent, her father, is happily an alcoholic.
After Robin decides to pay a visit to upbeat and carefree Nancy, she and her morose and serious (brunette) twin sister Georgina decide to have a laugh at his expense, and Georgina meets him that day, instead of Nancy. Dad isn't happy about their meetings at all, and tries to intervene. Nancy runs away. Her mother, Mrs. Brent quite literally dies when she hears the news. Light streaming down from rounded window onto Mrs. Brent's dead body slouched over in a chair is a good visual; was that Hitchcock's idea or director Graham Cutts? Beautiful, elaborate set designs and lighting, by Hitchcock, are the film's biggest asset, but film is interesting even without them. Twins switching places with each other, mistaken identities, one's death, and a Parisian cabaret with a creepy looking mascot called The Cat Who Laughs all distinguish this from a routine love triangle movie.
The opening and closing seconds of each of the three surviving reels of this are in a bad state, melted and shredded, from sitting in a film vault for the best part of a century, but restoration worked wonders for the remainder of the footage. Unfortunately, after approximately 40 minutes, the footage runs out, and the rest of the film remains still lost.
"It may be said that there are no such things as white shadows, but just as the sun casts a dark shadow, so does the soul cast its shadow of white, reflecting a purity that influences the lives upon whom the white shadows fall. - Selznik"
