An absolute "must" for lovers of romantic costume dramas-and the fascination that comes with seeing sophisticated actors in their more reckless early roles. The plot deals with a four-sided "triangle" (Phyllis Calvert, wife of Marquis James Mason, falls in love with cavalier Stewart Granger; meanwhile, Calvert's childhood friend Margaret Lockwood has schemed her way into the bed of the Marquis) but it's anything but square: marvelous scenes of confrontation include floggings, poisonings, pillages. William K. Everson: The film showed that there was a big market for home-grown (wartime) escapism; it launched a long-running series of Gothic and Regency romances. It also made an immediate superstar of James Mason whose brooding malevolence here caught the public's fancy. The film's (discreet) exploitation of sex and sadism, then rare in British film, was another box-office plus factor, and the stars became so big that never again would all four be co-starred in one film. Not a great film but a very handsome one, it has somehow become much maligned almost because of its public appeal.