User reviews

Certainly not the best Tulio Film, here he teams up again with writer Nisse Hirn and actress Regina Linnanheimo. The set-up is fairly conventional melodrama. Two sisters both fall for a handsome doctor and when the doctor marries the older sister, the younger one, heart-broken, leaves the country. After some dramatic twists, the younger sister returns home and the main characters find themselves in an agonizing love triangle.

The dialog, even by Tulio/Hirn standards, is laughably stiff and pompous for the first 20-30 minutes. After that it settles into something a bit less over-the-top, but don't get it confused, this is melodrama through and through. And as the drama tightens, Linnanheimo's acting chops are truly put to the test; and viewers do well to remind themselves that this is melodrama, not real life.

Tulio's visual touch is here, with the accustomed close-ups and inventive editing. What makes this truly interesting, however, is the moral ambiguity. For 1946, there are a number of questionable elements here that would have had Hollywood censors reaching for their heart medicine in utter shock.