Fascinating German film star Lil Dagover - in her one Hollywood vehicle - plays a "woman of the world" whose stock-in-trade is an ability to see through men and she puts her heart into her work.
Dagover has poise and oomph and easy emotional range transcending the film's rather old-hat menage-a-trois intrigue. She's a pleasure to watch, an exotic glimpse of past feminine glamour and Viennese charm.
Walter Huston is good but unbudgingly stolid. Warren William is the romantic lead who later descends into delirium without ever receiving Dagover's go-ahead. The men wear splendid naval uniforms and struggle mightily with the call of duty. This is the film's antique theme: Love vs. Valor.
Director Michael Curtiz seems to enjoy filming Dagover, although he can't do for her what von Sternberg did for Dietrich: he doesn't build the film around her. He spends too much time on shipboard maneuvers and the action scenes of a naval battle. Much salt water is spewed.
The ending does have a fantastic Monte Carlo tilt, neatly dispensing with the entire melodrama we've just sat through as just another notch in the woman of the world's cigarette holder.
Either there wasn't room in Hollywood, or Dagover decided she prefered life in Germany, but she never made another film here.
