At the hotel Anni experiences a sort of rebirth, discovering a bird's nest outside her window, untold luxury and her friend Maria ( Mary Philips) ensconced as the maid.  The friendship between the women is wonderful, and a sure touch of Dorothy Azner, as the two embrace and squeal happily and Anni says she feels "like a fat woman  with her corsets off."  It is also a good way for Anni to measure her feelings against a trusted person of her own standing.  The refreshing perspective of a director who likes and understands women is another reason this film works so well.  Due to an earlier circumstance where the intended driver was delayed, Anni wound up riding to the hotel via donkey cart with postman Giulio (Franchot Tone, Crawford’s then-husband).  She was clearly enchanted by his abundant love of nature, although trying vainly to act superior to him.  As Armalia predicted, Rudi doesn’t suspect that “Ann” is not in his social class and becomes instantly smitten with her beauty and mystique, pursuing her in spite of his engagement to Maddelena Monti (Lynne Carver).  Anni, having tasted the good life and desiring to bask forever in its warmth, decides she is not going back.  Rudi is her ticket and she works her magic on him, hoping he will marry her, even though she loves Giulio.  As she tells Maria, “If you saw a chance to come out of the gutter and live as you never dreamed you could live, to have the things you never dreamed could exist, you’d sacrifice anything to take that chance, wouldn’t you?”  But will her golden carriage turn back into a pumpkin when her time is up?

Crawford is simply sublime.  There are some critics and reviewers who say this role is unsympathetic and cite Crawford’s cynicism.  Of course she is cynical, as Anni would be.  How else do people denied by life and rank act?  Like Julia Roberts' ridiculously sweet prostitute in "Pretty Woman?"  I think not.  Anni's longing and desperation is real, as are her warts, making her achingly sympathetic.  She does not descend into the impossible, mawkish nobility that infected characters like “Sadie McKee.”  Who can't understand why this girl would want to stay more than two weeks in the sun?  One of the most moving scenes, in fact, is where she runs through a pine forest to the top of the mountain and stands looking out, both breathlessly happy and in tears.  When Rudi asks her why she is crying, she hides her face self-consciously and says, "I just thought that I'll be gone next week -- and I just thought I'll never see the sun again."  Even more poignant -- when she sees a lake that she likens to a drop of jade and says wistfully, "I had a jade ring once."  Crawford brings the dialogue and scene to its fullest wrenching beauty.  Does Maria's life look appealing -- over-worked maid cow-towing to her "betters?"  Perhaps this role resonates so much because Crawford in real life knew hardship and we believe her.  This is one of her most sincere and whole performances, moreso than many of the rags-to-riches roles she played because it doesn’t compromise.  She skirts a wonderful, delicate balance between all shades of Anni, between the tentative, insecure, frightened, deprived Anni, somewhat shy and in love with a world she is seeing for the first time, conscious of her missteps, and the cynical and calculating Anni, never having had luck yet able to be a friend, bewitching and seductive in a sophisticated, worldly way people have forgotten how to be.  

The peasants here, like the natives in “Rain,” are annoyingly shown as singing happily, the prevalent stereotype of the lower classes, indicating them to be unfettered by complex needs.  Thankfully, Anni is human and even says cynically of Armalia when she's told he wants her to come to his table at the club in Trieste, “Oh, a count, is he?  Come to stare at the animals in the zoo?”  There are a lot of great touches throughout from the saucy music box figure of Crawford in the titles in form-fitting, extremely provocative dress perched on a mountain top to the scene where Anni tears up the note Rudi brings to her table and leans forward, showing cleavage (boy, a gay woman was directing this one!) and then can’t figure out which of the many forks to use until the waiter, Giulio’s friend, comes to the rescue.  Amusingly she plays hard to get with Rudi, saying she’s not accustomed to sitting at strange tables on demand when he invites her, a parallel against the early scene in Trieste.  Spoilers - And when she finally does wear the red dress, her dream dress which is viewed as too gauche and a mark presumedly of a scarlet woman (symbolic in itself of a crushed dream), and humiliatingly faces the aristocrats who now know her secret and throw her out like yesterday’s garbage, she returns to her room and calls out for Maria.  The pain on her face is only comparable to the sequence in "A Woman's Face" when she tells Melvyn Douglas, "Can't you all leave me alone?" It’s a superb scene marred only by Maria’s ridiculously trite speech as she comforts the sobbing Anni.  For Anni in that moment, the dream is over.   This is the fairy tale turned inside out, the fairy godfather's benevolence a cruel joke.

This is the last of seven films Crawford and Tone did together.  Tone, in spite of the lederhosen, does a great job as Giulio.  Their marriage on the outside was falling apart (and one sees a defeat and sadness in Crawford's eyes that one imagines was not all acting) yet it was one of the instances in which the couple have real chemistry onscreen.  As Anni rides off into the sun with Giulio on the donkey cart at the end, both in peasant costumes (which pained me), it's hard to imagine if she's "choosing love" or forfeiting her dream to rise above her station, put in her "place."  But one imagines there will be the breathtaking mountains for compensation.

One of Crawford’s greatest and most poignant performances, deserving its own “place in the sun.”  - D. Nowak