Felix Milne (Burgess Meredith) is an overworked psychologist who carries his own psychological burdens as he navigates the tangled lives of his patients and acquaintances. Molly Lucian (Barbara White) seeks his help for her husband, Adam Lucian (Kieron Moore), a former fighter pilot whose wartime trauma has left him fragile and increasingly volatile. Adam’s fragile state is complicated by his own acts and the pressure building beneath the surface, setting the stage for a tense, intimate drama about trust, dependence, and the thin line between care and control.
One evening, a private gathering brings together Peter Edge (Michael Shepley) and Barbara Edge (Christine Norden) with Felix and his wife. In a quiet, revealing moment, Peter hints at Barbara’s desires and suggests she might benefit from additional help, a suggestion that stirs curiosity and unease around Barbara and her connections to the group. This exchange plants the seeds for Barbara’s later decision to seek Felix’s professional insight, even as Felix himself grapples with his own unsettling feelings.
Adam meets Felix for a formal consultation, a turning point that exposes the fragility of a man pushed to the edge by war and captivity. Adam is described as 28 years old, the son of a barrister, with an injured leg, and his demeanor signals an approaching breakdown—an unsettling trajectory toward schizophrenia that Felix is asked to interpret and manage. The session reveals how trauma manifests not only in memory but in present danger, and how a therapist’s boundaries are tested by a patient who can turn both compelling and unpredictable.
Meanwhile, Barbara and Peter host a party that becomes a crucible for unspoken attraction and professional doubt. Felix muses about meeting Barbara again, hinting at his own conflicting feelings while recognizing the ethical lines that must be preserved. The allure Barbara holds for him intensifies the complexity of the relationships at play, just as Adam’s shadows loom larger in Felix’s ongoing study of his case.
Throughout their interactions, Adam has even turned Felix’s walking stick into a symbolic reminder of the dependence he fears he cannot escape—the need for support that might never fully arrive. The personal symbolism mirrors the clinical questions Felix weighs: how far can a caregiver go before the line between healing and entanglement is crossed?
In a striking gesture, Adam steals a gold cigarette case from Regent’s Street, a provocative act meant to shock and challenge the boundaries of his own psyche—and perhaps to test the limits of Felix’s tolerance. Adam candidly admits to stealing a variety of objects as part of this disturbing impulse, yet Felix remains strangely unshocked, choosing not to overreact or shut down the fragile trust that has formed between them.
As their sessions unfold, Adam confesses a chilling dream in which he would strangle his wife, prompting Felix to press for details about his past prison camp experiences. Adam resists, keeping certain memories firmly locked away, and the tension between sharing and withholding deepens the psychological drama at the heart of the story.
A chance meeting between Barbara and Felix leads to a shared afternoon of shopping, where they purchase a fur coat for Felix’s wife and share a drink. Barbara arrives later with a present of her own, admitting she had tried on the coat previously, which triggers a small disagreement and adds another layer to the already delicate dynamic between Barbara and Felix. This incident underscores the way affection, jealousy, and professional interest braid together in their intertwined lives.
As the events unfold, Felix finds his own home life growing increasingly strained, mirroring the mounting pressures of his therapeutic work. The narrative threads together themes of duty and desire, the power of suggestion and the weight of memory, and the ways in which personal history can obstruct or illuminate a path to healing. The film remains calmly observational in tone, letting the characters’ choices and vulnerabilities drive the drama and leaving room for interpretation about what helps, what hurts, and where the line between care and control truly lies.
