tomorrow is forever

Rating:
Date: 2008-02-03
Emotional Sentimentality
This is an outstanding sentimentalist film. It is very touching and heartbreaking to watch, but I still do watch it. Orson Welles gives a mesmerizing performance as John MacDonald, a man who is badly wounded and transfigured by his experiences in the First World War. Claudette Colbert, as his wife, gives a brilliant performance combining intellect and heartbreaking emotion. Welles returns from the war, Claudette Colbert thinking him lost forever, as a traumatized and enigmatically distant European. The plot emotionally thickens, as I don't wish to give any more details away. You must see this film to truly appreciate it. It also features Richard Long, Natalie Wood, George Brent and Lucile Watson. It was directed by Irving Pichel, with cinematography is by Joseph Valentine with another fine score by the stalwart Max Steiner.

Rating:
Date: 2007-09-25
not on DVD..???!!!
I saw this on TCM, and just freaked out on the sheer emotion of it. If you liked "Kane", you'll love this. The scene when Orson is about to break and doesn't, clinches it for me. Why isn't this on DVD...? A remaster widescreen would do for me!

Rating:
Date: 2007-01-10
Great movie!
This is a good movie for a couple to watch together. Orson Welles is great! The ending was not what I expected.

Rating:
Date: 2006-10-17
Preposterous But Eminently Watchable Melodrama Thanks Mainly to an Enigmatic Welles
Despite the movie's Harlequin-level romance novel title, the unlikely pairing of classic Hollywood leading lady Claudette Colbert and resident bad-boy Orson Welles actually works in this intriguing albeit far-fetched 1946 melodrama directed by the relatively undistinguished Irving Pichel. Written by Lenore J. Coffee, the plot concentrates initially on newly married John and Elizabeth McDonald, who are suddenly separated when he enlists for combat duty during WWI. Just as she discovers she is pregnant, Elizabeth receives word that John is dead, but the truth is that he is so badly injured that he doesn't want to return to her as a cripple. Once recovered, he takes on the guise of an Austrian scientist named Erik Kessler. Twenty years elapse, and Elizabeth has remarried to businessman Larry Hamilton, who has coincidentally recruited Kessler to test the company's new product formula. Elizabeth meets Kessler but does not recognize him to be her long lost John due to plastic surgery. However, John knows her, and they become intertwined again when their son Drew decides to enlist in the RAF years before the U.S. enters WWII.

The story sounds preposterous on paper, but it is quite compelling to see the movie evolve toward its inevitable resolution. Colbert is her naturally effervescent self, though she is well into her forties here and a mite too mature for the early scenes when she is playing a blushing newlywed to the twelve-years younger Welles. Nonetheless, she provides surprising bite to the scenes where Elizabeth confronts her own prejudices about war. In the juiciest role, Welles has a field day as the crippled, defeated Kessler as he keeps his naturally grandiose manner in check. Perennial also-ran George Brent is wooden as expected as Hamilton, but a couple of familiar faces shine as the children - Richard Long as the grown Drew and an eight-year old Natalie Wood, blonde and sporting a convincing Austrian accent, as Kessler's adopted daughter Margaret. There are some lapses in credibility beginning with Elizabeth's inability to recognize John and ending with her rather sudden resignation that John is right in his perspective on the past. Regardless, it's a surprisingly involving movie with a mature perspective on love and war, a curio sadly forgotten today and well worth a look now.

Rating:
Date: 2006-05-15
A brilliant melodrama
Possibly Welles' most underrated role. His performance is simply superb, as are the others in the cast. Also watch for Natalie Wood, astonishingly accomplished in this role that required that she perfect a foreign accent, and show a trememdous range of emotion at the age of what, perhaps 5 or 6? Claudette Colbert shows why she was one of the top female actresses of her era and beyond. Dialogue a bit overdone in one or two places, but the rest of the film and Welles are so excellent this minor flaw is easy to forgive. A great melodrama, at the level of "Random Harvest," and very few others. How can this not be a dvd???

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