Love, Hate and a Woman

A shimmering Alpine sanatorium for the bored elite becomes the stage where class masquerade bleeds into erotic vertigo: Daryl Sutherland—petite mannequin disguised as satin heiress—glides through the chandeliers like a secret chord, her every syllable calibrated to mimic old-money languor. She collides with John Lockwood, a painter whose palette still smells of turpentine and revolt; between them sparks a rapport stitched from half-truths, the kind that makes onlookers recall Sappho in gloves. Mrs. Ramsey—patroness, collector, carnivorous orchid—sniffs competition and rips the lace curtain off Daryl’s pedigree, hurling the words “cloak model” like a rusted javelin. In the ensuing scandal, Daryl shields the older woman from a husband bristling with cuckolded fury by swearing that Lockwood is already her spouse; the lie detonates through drawing-rooms, rearranging desire’s furniture. Later, a telegram wrapped in black border hints that Daryl’s consumptive sister carried more than tuberculosis from Lockwood’s garret—guilt metastasizes, suspicion coils. Avalanche, moonlit sleigh chase, pistol dropped in powder-snow: the film hurtles toward absolution, revealing the real seducer as a mustachioed banker already linked to The Merry-Go-Round’s stock-market hymn. Fog lifts; two silhouettes embrace against glacier-blue, the lie that saved a marriage now the truth that seals their own.