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This excellent film is based on W. Somerset Maugham's 1925 novel of the same name. Maugham states in his introduction to the book that he got the idea for it when he was a young medical student taking a holiday in Florence. While there he was reading Dante with the help of an Italian tutor. One passage in “Il Purgatorio” referred to a certain Pia who tells Dante “Siena mi fe, disfecemi Maremma” (Siena made me, Maremma unmade me). The tutor explained that these words refer to Pia, a gentlewoman of Siena, who was suspected of infidelity by her husband. Because of her family connections, he feared putting her to death in Siena and so took Pia to his castle in Maremma where the noxious fumes were certain to kill her. When she refused to succumb, he threw her out a window. Apparently, Maugham was so impressed that he kept the story in mind until years later he turned it into a contemporary novel. Indeed, the story seems to have a general appeal as this is the third time it has been dramatized for the cinema.
The major character is Kitty Garstin, the attractive daughter of an ambitious and pretentious mother who sees in Kitty's beauty and charm an opportunity for her to make a prestigious union and thereby elevate the family's social standing. Kitty attends the required dances and parties but rejects many suitors as not good enough until she finds herself still single at the age of 25, with no prospects. Her situation is made all the more humiliating by the announcementthat her younger, and less desirable, sister has become engaged to an outstanding young man. In this state of desperation, Kitty chances to encounter Walter Fane, a young doctor specializing in bacteriology, who is on leave in London from China, on the street. She is barely aware of his existence although they have met many times before and he has danced with her often. He asks