The screenplay was written by the team of Sarah Y. Mason and Victor Heerman, with Anthony Veiller, from a story by Lester Cohen, specifically for Hepburn.

The film was promoted by RKO's advertising department with the catch phrase: "The star of a million moods together with the new idol of the screen."

Constance grows bitter at Franz's drinking and apparent infidelity, and tells him at a New Year's Eve party that she has learned from him and plans to live it up too.

He collapses on the podium as the orchestra tries to play a Bach piece with his increasingly erratic guidance; Constance, in the audience, is overcome by pity and rushes to his dressing room, but he furiously invites all the other men there to socialize with her, and walks out.

Writing for The Spectator, Graham Greene praised the acting of Boyer and Hepburn which he described as "talented enough to keep some of our interest even in a story of this kind".

Concerning Hepburn in particular, Greene observed she "always makes her young women quite horrifyingly lifelike with their girlish intuitions, their intensity, their ideals which destroy the edge of human pleasure".