Well, as soon as we see that Joseph Cotten and Edna Oliver are in this, we know it won't be a bad film... it was nominated for best Music in a drama, but The Devil and Daniel Webster won it that year. Lydia (Merle Oberon) and Michael (Cotten) meet up in their later years, and reminisce about the past, which we always seem to remember as better than it was. Edna Oliver is (once again)the overbearing, frumpy grandmother who is very set in her ways, and is determined that Lydia will only be with a proper gentleman.Lydia and her old beaus talk about "the grand ball" they had attended in their youth, with the harps, mirrors, and chandeliers, which everyone remembers differently. Then, we flash back to the glorious football game, on which they also disagree. We flash forward, then backward, and forward and backward, and its all a lot of work to keep up with where we are now. It's all done competently, but there are no sparks between her and the men from her past, and its a little like reading a history book. It just seems to be a lot of talk about being in love way back when. Then, about halfway through, Lydia meets up with a little boy who changes her life. Then we find out how Lydia got to where she is today. It's entertaining enough, but not one of my favorite films. Produced by Alexander Korda, who happened to be Oberon's hubby at the time.

Cast member who failed to be mentioned in the credits of Lydia, was the great Gertrude Hoffman, best known for her portrayal of Mrs. Odetts in My Little Margie. I saw the show many times as a kid growing up in the 50's and 60's. The scene in Lydia occurs when Lydia (portrayed by Merle Oberon) and her fiancée Robert (portrayed by George Reeves) apply for a room for their wedding night. The landlady is Gretrude Hoffman. (Merle later decides not to marry Robert, as he was drinking heavily). I am pretty certain that the landlady was Gertrude. She has appeared in a number of films, including Foreign Correspondent. I also noticed that Footlight Glamour with Penny Singleton and Arthur Lake had a lady in the cast who resembled and spoke like Gertrude, but was listed on INDb as Elspeth Dudgeon, who appeared in The Old Dark House. This is a mystery to me, as she looks exactly like the lady from Foreign Correspondent and My Little Margie!

An unexceptionable pleasure to the primary senses of the eyes and ears. This results from a combination of Oberon's lush eyebrows and the pillowy opulence one imagines from a director with a surname like Duvivier. The film is a 'refashioning' of his French-language 'Un Carnet De Bal' from 1937, in that the basic plot is Oberon's portmanteau recollection of 4 past loves. Cynics may understandably dive for the sick bags, but it's a pleasant surprise therefore to find that for all the typical Fox emphasis on visual scrumptiousness, this romantic opus turns out to be a narratively literate affair. It's lent considerable dramatic weight by an excellent cast, including an uncharacteristically unhistrionic Oberon.

If you can feel the pain and longing of others (and who can't?), this picture will break your heart. Yes, it is slow, even plodding at times, but the ending overrides all of that.Being totally, hopelessly (or is it hopefully?) in love, she rejects the stability offered by a loyal, devoted suitor and friend for the memory of the one man who made her blood boil. Although he did not return to her, as promised, she thinks of him constantly and dares to cherish the hope that one day he may, after all, return to her.She is an old woman when in fact he does reappear by chance in her life. Pathetically, this is to somehow justify the wasted years. She is trembling with anticipation, ready to learn why he was unable to return to her, his lover, eager to forgive even though it has cost her youth and happiness.Need I go on? He doesn't even remember who she is. He was the one man in her life; she learns much too late that she was obviously one of a great many women in his.More than a "women's picture" or conventional tearjerker, this one deserves your attention. Just be patient.