Robert Merrick (Robert Taylor) seems to be a magnet for morbid coincidences. First he’s indirectly responsible for a great doctor’s death, then the doctor’s widow (Irene Dunne) is blinded because of him. But further chance occurrences, plus a sort of spiritual pyramid scheme, will set this callow playboy on a path toward redemption. Questions of life and death, power and payment hover over what is, at its best, a tender love story. Magnificent Obsession was remade by Douglas Sirk, but Stahl’s evenly lit world of unlikely happenings has less in common with Sirk than with some imaginary hybrid of Borzage and Buñuel.

—Juliet Clark