In his first feature, filmed at the UFA studios in Germany and on location in Italy, Hitchcock adds a certain Continental flair to a tale of two chorus girls and their respective loves. As the increasingly fevered melodrama follows the fortunes of good girl and bad, pointed edits play up the moral contrasts: one woman's water, another's champagne. A melancholy honeymoon at Lake Como demonstrates the director's mastery of lyrical unease, and the opening scene, in which we view the chorus line through an aging ogler's binoculars, shows that Hitchcock's signature mix of visual invention, sexual provocation, and winking humor was there from the start.
—Juliet Clark