This film is based around the premise that a once-wealthy Jewish girl in 19th Century London, whose father has been killed, can pass herself off as a half-Italian non-Catholic in what appears to be an English household on the Scottish island of Skye. It works up to a point but to my mind was rather slight. The affair between the girl, now The Governess and her employer, a photographic pioneer, is well done, I thought, though the anorexically thin son of the same is not exactly pleasant to look at, especially in the near nude on the beach. He is in love with the governess, whereas the father is more in lust with her.
One flaw in the film is that (perhaps inevitably, directed as this was by someone called Goldbacher) the Jews in the story are all (bar a couple of old crones who want to marry the girl to a fishmonger)warm, intelligent, pleasant...whereas the non-Jews are boring, plaintive, dishonest...you get the picture. Even the photographic breakthrough is not made by the householder in Skye, but by the governess...and then the man takes the credit for it and cuts dead the governess. In the end the former governess becomes a famous photographer and the film peters out.
Overall, worth seeing once.