Here is a film in which scene after scene is so implausible that the movie kept pushing me outside and making me ask how the key scenes could possibly be taken seriously.

[Shining Through] is very much like the lush, sweeping, sentimental epics that Hollywood churned out during the '40s -- and as overblown and treacly as any of the patriotic paeans released during those war-torn years.

David Seltzer has had the good sense to stick to a proven formula and the whole thing is genuinely romantic.

Lavishly staged in German locations and handsomely costumed -- with some particularly fetching hats for Griffith -- Shining Through is never hard to watch. Sometimes, however, it is ludicrous to listen to.