24 Hours of a Woman's Life


24 Hours of a Woman's Life, also known as Affair in Monte Carlo, is a 1952 British romantic drama film directed by Victor Saville and starring Merle Oberon. It is loosely based on the novella by Stefan Zweig.

Plot

Monsieur Blanc, the middle-aged proprietor of a café in Antibes, is eagerly preparing for his wedding to Henriette. He is devastated, however, when Henriette runs away with a young man she apparently only met the day before. Robert Sterling, a writer and one of the café patrons, tells the other diners that he has seen the same thing before: someone falling in love with a complete stranger.
He was playing host to Linda, a young widow whom he knew well, and three other guests aboard his yacht anchored in Monte Carlo. When he persuades her to visit the casino one night, she became irresistibly attracted to an unstable young man who became suicidal after losing all his money at roulette. Sterling describes how they fell deeply in love, and how they then had to face difficult decisions about the future.

Cast

The Spectator described it as "a film of such artificiality and bathos the very typewriter keys cling together to avoid describing it." TV Guide called the film a "poor sudser, although the background of the romantic Riviera and its fabulous casino provides some exotic interest."