The story is by Erich Maria Remarque, it's just a short story, but his name must raise anyone's expectations to some level, while instead the film presents many question marks. Barbara Stanwyck is a concert pianist of some world renown who suffers from tuberculosis and is sent to a sanatorium in Switzerland, where she is subjected to Dr David Niven, who confines her in strict discipline, so that she may not even play any more. Here is the first big question mark. How is it possible for a doctor to decide that practising music for a musician must be harmful to her? On the contrary, nothing could do her more good. That if anything should be the best medicine. As it is, she finds her confined existence intolerable and escapes with a playboy mostly interested in motor car races, and he is used to taking girls away, especially since he is good looking (Richard Conte), and naturally this launches her into a crisis, so Doctor David has to rescue her. It's a kind of Camille story, and it builds up to a tragedy, but somehow the story instead ends up in general disappointment. Barbara Stanwyck as always is excellent, she is always supremely admirable, David Niven makes a rather poor match for her and does not really understand her, Richard Conte takes her from another angle and fails even more, and so the story and the film never reaches any tenable conclusion. It is a beautiful romance with great acting, Barbara's dresses are magnificent and enough reasons for admiring this film in themselves, the music by Miklos Rosza adds plenty of moody atmosphere and intensity in the relationships and intimacies, but it is not a great film, a dwarf compared to Greta Garbo's "Camille", although Barbara Stanwyck makes the film sustained enough anyway - she is always reliable for quality.
There was originally a different ending, which was cut out for its second release a few years after the first, an ending which would have been more plausible. As it is, we are left hanging - is she getting better or is she as dying as she appears to be? In the original version before the cut, she dies while David is awkwardly playing the piano - a nocturne by Chopin, by all means, but nevertheless as awkwardly as ever, but Barbara Stanwyck (Karen Duncan) would not anyway care any more.
There was originally a different ending, which was cut out for its second release a few years after the first, an ending which would have been more plausible. As it is, we are left hanging - is she getting better or is she as dying as she appears to be? In the original version before the cut, she dies while David is awkwardly playing the piano - a nocturne by Chopin, by all means, but nevertheless as awkwardly as ever, but Barbara Stanwyck (Karen Duncan) would not anyway care any more.