Adapted from W. Somerset Maugham's novel, this saga of unrequited love follows club-footed English art student Philip Carey (Laurence Harvey) in his quest to win the love of slatternly waitress Mildred Rogers (Kim Novak), a vulgar beauty who holds Philip's deformity in contempt. Giving up art for medicine and vowing to shake his unhealthy obsession with Mildred, Philip romances a supportive writer -- but when pregnant and abandoned Mildred appears, Philip's self-destructive feelings return.