After her star-making five-film rendezvous with Von Sternberg, Paramount wanted Dietrich to try something new; thus her Mamoulian turn as a naïve, orphaned peasant girl who has been consigned to an austere, tethered existence with her cantankerous aunt. Mamoulian wittingly withholds the iconic Dietrich—allowing cruel reality to gradually wear away the innocence—so that his audience may enjoy both versions and revel in the startling transformation. The somewhat star-crossed love story does not attempt to bridge the usual Mamoulian class gap but traverses a more eccentric, economic chasm. The director sweeps the melodrama along in sublime strokes, underlined by a comic touch and highlighted by Lily’s beautifully rapt soliloquy of love—reminiscent of Queen Christina’s ode to the bedroom—about her lover, yet directed to the earth.