A Million Bid

In the shadow of a high-society auction where a woman's future is sold to the highest bidder, A Million Bid unfolds as a psychological inquiry into the permanence of trauma. Dorothy, played with a fragile grace by Dolores Costello, is coerced by her social-climbing mother into a union with Geoffrey Marsh, a man whose wealth is matched only by his cruelty. After a catastrophic shipwreck seemingly erases Marsh from the earth, Dorothy finds a second chance at happiness with Dr. Loring, a visionary brain surgeon. However, the past literally washes ashore when a broken, amnesiac Marsh becomes Loring’s patient. The film pivots from a standard melodrama into a tense ethical thriller as Loring realizes that his surgical skill could restore the very man who would destroy his marriage. It is a story of medical ethics clashing with the primal instinct for self-preservation, set against the backdrop of 1920s opulence and tragedy.