It also stars Merle Oberon and Michael Rennie with Cameron Mitchell, Elizabeth Sellars, Charlotte Austin, Cathleen Nesbitt, Carolyn Jones and Evelyn Varden.

The film was nominated for two Academy Awards, for Best Art Direction (color) (Lyle R. Wheeler, Leland Fuller, Walter M. Scott, Paul S. Fox) and Best Costume Design (René Hubert and Charles LeMaire).

Napoleon tells her that he will always love her and will return soon for their wedding, but, as the months pass, Désirée starts doubting him and goes to the city where she meets General Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte.

Napoleon involves France in more wars, and Bernadotte is approached by representatives of King Charles XIII of Sweden, who wishes to adopt him and make him the heir to the throne.

Soon after, during the War of the Sixth Coalition, Bernadotte leads one of the armies that overwhelms Napoleon, and the triumphant general reunites with Désirée before returning to Sweden.

Commenting on how strange it is that the two most outstanding men of their time had fallen in love with her, Napoleon gives Désirée his sword in surrender and assures her that her dowry was not the only reason that he proposed to her many years before in Marseille.

Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote: "A great deal of handsome decoration and two talented and attractive stars have been put into the CinemaScope production of the historical romance 'Desiree.'

The only essential missing is a story of any consequence ... Mr. Taradash's script is quite positive in indicating that Napoleon loved the girl in the first flush of his ascendancy.

"[7] John McCarten of The New Yorker wrote, "There's a lot of colorful stuff on view—palace fêtes, lovely gardens and so on—but the plot is practically invisible.