Stroheim's most romantic film, this is the surviving first part of a
two-part epic (its sequel, The Honeymoon, has been lost). As such, it
both delights and frustrates. Stroheim weaves his melancholy story
with characteristic attention to detail, describing a doomed
romantic idyll (shot with exceptional beauty in soft focus among
falling apple blossoms) as an oasis from the contrasted but equally
cruel worlds of Viennese high society, with its decadent materalism,
and the milieu of a violent under-class. The film builds to a climax of
painful irony, but one which suggests possibilities for development
that might have transcended the potent but slightly schematic
contrasts visible here.
