Professor Pal Lukas berates student John Darrow in class in an effort to make him understand what beauty is. But Darrow sees the humiliation. Darrow's wife, Wynne Gibson models for Lukas, half of a statue he calls "Ambition, and Darrow does also in this image of a woman pushing her man on. He hates it so much he runs away and joins the Marines. When he returns to tell off Lukas, he discovers that Miss Gibson has a six-month-old son, which she assures him is his; neither has Lukas touched her. Darrow doesn't care. He tries to kill Lukas, and Miss Gibson clunks him with an objet d'arte, which kills him. She spends ten years in prison, to return to Lukas, but the child, now grown into Tad Alexander, hates her.
It's another story from Vicki Baum, but this one is pure soap opera. The director is Karl Freund, better known as one of the industry's best and most inventive cameramen. This very short soap opera concentrates on her images at various stages in her life, turned into art. You may, if you wish, view this as a metaphor for the art of film making. However the oppressive score by Howard Jackson is so instructive of the audience's feelings that it seems to overwhelm any possible human emotion. Sam Hardy, who wanders in and out for very brief periods as a friend of the family hints that it was cut down severey before it was released. Although the performances are fine, te version that I looked at indicates that either it didn't work at a longer length, or that the Laemmles had no idea what to make of the movie.
