This incredibly well-produced MGM weeper is rich in studio-bound atmospherics, with entire Indian villages and epic jewelry stores recreated on a Hollywood backlot; the geniuses who assembled lush gardens and exotic princely surroundings provided their American audiences with a taste of mad romance unencumbered by logic or common sense, as rather fey Ramon Novarro, the leading hot star of the period, creates another ethnic type antithetical to his native Mexican roots, and does so with quiet dedication. Regardless of societal strictures, he and precious Madge Evans ignore convention, throw caution to the winds, and fall deeply into a heavy-breathing relationship, a possibility that the Hollywood Code would have completely forbidden only a few years later, as even the mention of mixed race marriage was generally taboo. And Novarro's rather precious, if effective style, would give way, too, to the whip-cracking undeniable masculinity of Clark Gable, who would brook no nonsense from anybody, and whose early films with Jean Harlow still crackle with lively sexual energy. Character stalwarts C. Aubrey Smith, Conrad Nagel and Marjorie Rambeau provide opposing viewpoints to the hapless lovers in this offbeat but oddly enchanting relic of a disappearing era.