The assets of this film are almost too many to have room in a single film - the result is that the film is bursting with beauty, as if everyone involved in it were set on overwhelming the audience for good. The first asset is the lovely melody by Kurt Weill, marvellously woven into a larger context with Rachmaninov, Chopin and Italian romances by Victor Young. The second major asset is the ingenious script by Ben Hecht, intentionally leading you and the lovers into a maze of escapism with no way out except inevitable destiny, they are aware of it themselves, the formidable Madame Francoise Rosay keeps reminding Joan Fontaine of the impossibility of the situation all the time, but she refuses to wake up from her lovely dream, and Ben Hecht keeps prolonging it just to make the end of the line more difficult for her, and finally he spares her by surprising the audience with a final coup de force, leading everything into a blind alley of mystery. The masterful direction by William Dieterle, who knew how to handle such delicate matters as this, which he proved earlier in "The Love Letters" and "Portrait of Jennie" (both also with Joseph Cotten) without ever getting lost in sentimentality or exaggerated emotionalism, is another vital asset, like the scenery of all the loveliest places in Italy, while Jessica Tandy as the wife makes perhaps the most remarkable performance among the actors, giving a very convincing portrait of a wife who has lost her love but not her soul. Indeed, all the superlatives are unnecessary, because they all end up in just one of the major masterpieces of romantic films in all film history.