Hitchcock retrospectively asserted that this melodrama of love, class, and social mores in a small fishing village was “not a Hitchcock movie,” its uncharacteristically sober tone dictated by the reputation of Hall Caine's source novel. But what it lacks in Hitchcockian humor it makes up in dramatic intensity, with a triangle of strong performances by Carl Brisson, Malcolm Keen, and especially Anny Ondra as the barmaid who has pledged herself to one man but given herself to the other. The film's moral landscape is as harsh as its settings are picturesque, with the cliffs and cottages of Cornwall standing in for the Isle of Man.
—Juliet Clark