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The nobleman is John Justin, who has been chasing a face all his life—the ideal face that belonged to Sylvia, a pretty little redhead to whom he plighted his puppy love when he was a schoolboy. Now a respectable married man, Justin accidentally runs into the face. It is not Sylvia, but Daphne, a cockney working girl, who has the same face. Though Justin never really gets very far with Daphne, he decides to go all-out as a playboy on the side—fictitious name, private quarters, a cloak-and-bull story about his job as a secret agent. Justin's dozens of mistresses are all the image of Sylvia, but the film examines only the affairs with Daphne, with Russian Ballerina Olga ("I know you secret agents are poorly paid . . . Some of my closest friends are spies"), and with Dress Model Colette.
Whatever laughs Writer Terence (The Winslow Boy) Rattigan can get out of this situation, the actors quickly milk dry. As a result, there is hardly enough to sustain the story for 89 minutes. Justin is a peerless blade, and his crony, Blimpish Roland Culver, is a good foil. Ballerina Moira Shearer has a field day playing Sylvia, Daphne, Olga and Colette, and she is all to the good. She also gets to dance some Sleeping Beauty, but clean and sharp as it is, a ballet performance looks peculiar in a bedroom.