When attractive but untalented Madame Honori confesses to her sinister singing teacher Svengali that she has left her husband, and refuses to accept her ex's settlement offer of money, he fixes her with an intense stare that drives her screaming from the room.

Untouched by her death, Svengali and his flatmate Gecko visit the studio of English artists the Laird, Taffy and Billee in search of a meal.

When Billee discovers Trilby posing nude for a group of artists, they quarrel, and Svengali convinces her to fake a suicide and leave Paris with him.

His powers weakened by the strength of her attachment to Billee, Svengali must keep canceling performances until, finally, her schedule is reduced to an engagement in an Egyptian cabaret.

[4] The novel is titled after the story's doomed heroine, but the character that caught the public's attention was the villain Svengali, a Jewish hypnotist and pianist who hypnotizes Trilby into becoming a great vocalist.

[5] Actor John Barrymore had performed on Broadway in early du Maurier adaptations, including the title role in Peter Ibbetson.

[5] In November 1930, Louella Parsons reported "the most surprising news of the year" that Warner Bros. had purchased the rights to adapt Trilby and that Barrymore was set to play the role of Svengali.

[6] After testing many candidates, including big names, Warner Bros. hired relative unknown Marian Marsh for the role of Trilby.

"[15] New York Times film critic Mordaunt Hall also praised Barrymore's Svengali, stating that his performance "surpasses anything he has done for the screen, including the motion pictures of Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Clyde Fitch's Beau Brummel.

"[12] Los Angeles Times critic Edwin Schallert praised the film as a "classic revived," marked by "its excellent irony and sinister interest [...] smoother, quieter, with a diminishing of the forced and somewhat self-conscious style".