Stolen Life (1939) Reviews

Adapted from the best-selling novel by K. J. Benes, A Stolen Life serves as a tour de force for German actress Elizabeth Bergner, whose husband Paul Czinner directed the film. Bergner stars as identical twins Sylvina and Martina, whose mild sibling rivalry intensifies when one of the girls tricks the other's sweetheart Alan McKenzie (Michael Redgrave) into proposing to the wrong twin. While Alan is away on business, his new bride and her sister go off on a yachting expedition. A storm at sea capsizes the vessel, wherupon one of the twins-the unmarried one--is drowned. As the other girl recovers, she finds that everyone assumes that she's actually her lookalike sister. Assuming the dead woman's identity, the surviving girl hopes to resume her pre-marital romance with Alan-only to discover that her sister had been carrying on a clandestine affair. If the plot sounds familiar, it's because A Stolen Life was remade in 1946 with Bette Davis as the sisters and Glenn Ford as the confused husband. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi