Postby Harvey Chartrand » Mon Feb 24, 2003 3:05 pm
I came across these user comments on 'Tomorrow Is Forever' on the Internet Movie Data Base and think the writer really nails what's wrong with this picture. Here is an excerpt from that critique:
"When you speak the name Orson Welles," Marlene Dietrich proclaimed, "you should kneel and make the sign of the cross!" Nowadays, few would disagree with paying such homage to filmdom's only true genius; but in 1945, Welles' name was anathema in Hollywood.
For the rest of his career, Welles would be relegated to supporting roles, voiceover narrations, and finally hitting rock-bottom by touting cheap wine on TV commercials, doing ANYTHING to raise enough funds in order to bequeath us such masterpieces as 'Othello' and 'Chimes at Midnight'.
"I subsidize myself," Welles said, receiving the American Film Institute's Life Achievement Award. "In other words, I'm crazy!"
(Tomorrow Is Forever) 1945's four-hanky weeper is a good example of just what rubbish Welles was willing to appear in to raise those funds. Welles portrays John MacDonald, who dashes off to WWI, leaving behind his wife, Elizabeth (a teary Claudette Colbert). John is declared MIA and Elizabeth announces to her employer, Lawrence Hamilton (the upstanding George Brent), that she is pregnant with John's child; however, this is 1945, so we can't say "pregnant." Naturally, Lawrence falls in love with Elizabeth, they marry, she has first John's child and then a child by Lawrence, but we don't see all that because the scene immediately shifts forward 20 years to find them all at the breakfast table.
Meanwhile, John is now living in Austria under the assumed name of Erik Kessler and for some unknown reason, speaking English with a preposterous mittel-European accent. He has also been horribly disfigured during the War, but in 1945, horrible disfigurement was suggested by rubbing black cork beneath Welles' eyelids.
John seeks passage to America and finds work as a research scientist in Lawrence Hamilton's company (!). Of course, John and Elizabeth meet and it remains unclear who recognizes whom and when.
Meanwhile, back at the manse, with war clouds gathering, Elizabeth's son Drew (Richard Long, looking amazingly like the young Orson Welles and doing a pretty good impersonation of Welles' mellifluous baritone) wants to join up and do his bit.
John dies suddenly, taking his secret that Drew is his son to the grave, having tossed into the lit fireplace a letter that would have explained it all to Drew. Unfortunately, Welles didn't have time to toss the script into the fireplace with it.
I give this stinker a BOMB rating - and indeed, if you see it, kneel and make the sign of the cross - and whisper a prayer for a brilliant career, in Purgatory.
