Summary
A jittery newlywed, still tasting rice-grains of ceremony on his tongue, discovers that the woman he spirited down the aisle is already tethered—by a prior vow—to a spectral first husband whose death certificate appears to have been written in vanishing ink. Through a maze of drawing-room glances, telegram ink-smears, and midnight train whistles, the groom’s euphoria ferments into dread as creditors, clergy, and a cigar-chomping attorney circle like carrion. Each revelation is a paper-cut: a bridal bouquet hiding pawn tickets, a wedding ring inscribed with another date, a honeymoon steamer trunk packed with love letters addressed to someone who shares his bride’s surname but not her future. The film stalks its own genre expectations, letting farce seep into noir until laughter catches in the throat like chalk. By the time the second husband confronts the supposedly deceased first on a fog-barnacled pier, the audience no longer knows which spouse is the haunt and which is the haunted; identity itself has become a palimpsest, scraped and rewritten by every new betrayal. The final shot—an unclaimed hat spinning on a dock—leaves matrimony not sanctified but amputated, a covenant dissolving into seawater and rumor.
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