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The rich girl, at any rate, finds something there. She falls in love with him. Alarmed, her father gets the unsuitable suitor a good job in another town; he turns it down. The daughter is sent to the Continent to forget about him; she does not. But while she is away, the hero has what he crudely calls his "compensations." Like Sorel, Lampton has an affair with a married woman (Simone Signoret) about ten years older than he; like Sorel, he falls deeply and truly in love. He asks the woman to get a divorce and marry him. But suddenly he discovers that he has got the rich girl with child. Her father agrees to the marriage. How about Joe? The last reel of the film staggers and stumbles a little, but rises to a fine, bitter parody of the conventional happy ending.
A gloomy business? Not in the least. The tragedy is never so dark that Author Braine and Scenarist Neil Paterson (who, for the most part, has done a splendid adaptation of the book) cannot see the humor of it. The dialogue is wickedly witty and sometimes gamy. The acting is first class all along the line. Actress Signoret is sure and natural, and Actor Harvey meets almost every demand of a long and grindingly difficult part. But the real star of the show is Director John Clayton, 37. In his first feature film he has made a long stride toward the head of the directorial class with his masterful development of the ironic theme that pervades and unifies the story: before all men can be outwardly equal, they must be inwardly free.