Don't forget - the movie is set in 1938. Perhaps this was done to make the morals seem pre-war.

What a beautiful post. I love this movie and love reading what people say about this timeless classic.

Oh contraire!
Yes, the movie misses current (or even perhaps current for the time period) expectations of love and romance. After all, the all high dogma of movies is "love uber alles." No matter what the situation, no matter how insurmountable the odds, man and woman in love conquer all obstacles before their path.
But that is not life, and bears as much resemblance to reality as a Jackson Pollock painting.
And not much has changed since Shakespeare's "the course of true love ne'er did run smooth." In spite of insipid attempts by Hollywood to bash the converse into our brains.
This movie is a masterpiece of juxtaposition and confluence of love, romance, morality, societal norms, and the brilliant use of symbolism all telegraphed via the score of Sergei Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto.
Perhaps when you have fallen out of contemporary idealism about romance and are willing to entertain it's reality, you will come back to this film and appreciate it.
It took me almost 40 years to do so, but I have to say this is now one of my all time favorite films. It takes a bit getting used to the dialogue for a yank, but once you get the hang of the cadence, the dialogue, particularly the self-narration is magnificent. In how many films does the narration berate the narrator without buffoonery? Not many. That's realism. It's poignant, and it's worth appreciating, if for nothing else than as a study of a character torn between two diverging paths.