Through a complex series of flashbacks The Locket explores the life of a jewel-obsessed kleptomaniac (Laraine Day). The story of her first marriage to an artist (Robert Mitchum) is told to a prospective third husband by her second husband, a psychiatrist (Brian Aherne) who is clearly out of his depth with the case of his own wife. Consciously Freudian in its approach, The Locket's source of continuing fascination lies not in that per se but in its pattern of narrative construction that mirrors the heroine-a chronic and disarming liar. As Errol Morris wrote for PFA, "Here, temporal disorder triumphs. Flashbacks within flashbacks within flashbacks. Does the flashback provide an explanation for action or does it avoid an explanation of action? Here each revelation of the past renders the present more opaque."