This lavish melodrama, based on a James M. Cain story (later remade by Douglas Sirk as Interlude) might represent the Hollywood melodrama at its most accomplished: the intense romance that Andrew Horn abstracts in Doomed Love is here, but tempered by nicely modulated performances by the key actors. John M. Stahl's treatment mixes moods--from comedy to drama to climactic spectacle--as well as timely issues, including a labor strike and a women's subtheme. (Stahl was considered one of Hollywood's “women's directors.”) Irene Dunne portrays the bright coffee-shop waitress who falls in love with pianist Charles Boyer and then must answer to his emotionally unstable wife. Barbara O'Neill received critical kudos for her portrayal of the distressed wife who rises from her depression to confront the “other woman” face to face. John Gillett and Jane Clarke of London's National Film Theatre write, “Like Borzage and Cukor, John M. Stahl...(was) an artist who did, indeed, ‘celebrate' his staunch heroines and developed a style in which the basic tenets of melodrama were stretched and transgressed.... (He enabled) players like...Irene Dunne...to produce their most rounded portraits of women caught up in a world of conflicting emotions and...double standards....”