Director Vincente Minnelli's fantastical musical centers on the past-life experiences of a brash New Yorker (Barbra Streisand), who speaks as a woman living in early-19th-century England when put under hypnosis by her shrink (Yves Montand). Fascinated by his patient, the doctor is determined to extract the root of her neurosis, which overcomes her as she see-saws between her modern life and her alternate, albeit far-fetched, existence.