Through a complex series of flashbacks, The Locket explores the life of a jewel-obsessed kleptomaniac (Laraine Day), narrating at once the story of her first marriage, which ends in the suicide of husband Robert Mitchum, and her second, to a psychiatrist (Brian Aherne) out of his depth with the case of his own wife. Consciously Freudian in its approach, The Locket's source of continuing fascination lies not in that per se, but in the pattern of construction (even now in the realm of the avant-garde) in which Brahm reflects his heroine - a chronic, and disarming, liar. Errol Morris writes, "Here, temporal disorder triumphs. Flashbacks within flashbacks within flashbacks. Does the flashback provide an explanation for action or does it avoid an explanation of action? Here, each revelation of the past renders the present more opaque."