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MovieMail's Review
Alex Davidson says that Sirk's incisive destruction of the American Dream should be far better known.
Made in the middle of his incredible string of 1950s Technicolor masterpieces, There’s Always Tomorrow tends to be neglected in analyses of Douglas Sirk’s melodramas. This is a great loss, for in this bitter destruction of the American Dream Sirk’s brilliance is at its zenith.
Toy manufacturer Fred MacMarray lives in suburbia with his deliriously conformist family who regard him as little more than a walking wallet (“If life were always an adventure it would be very exhausting” smirks Stepford wife Joan Bennett). When former colleague Barbara Stanwyck (on brilliant form) shows up on his doorstep, their connection is immediate and he finds potential escape from his mundane existence - but will he yield to temptation?
Unlike many standard melodramas, here the audience actively wants the hero to commit adultery - MacMurray’s manipulative children are even more selfish than those in All That Heaven Allows, while he himself is in danger of becoming like his latest invention, a talking robot. Will Stanwyck sacrifice his and her happiness and preserve the power of the American family unit? Anyone familiar Sirk’s merciless cinema may predict the answer.
Days with Sirk, a 61-minute documentary from 2008 featuring rare interview footage with Sirk shot in 1982
Original theatrical trailer
New optional English subtitles (SDH) for the hearing impaired
Original dialogue and continuity script (in PDF form)
Booklet featuring an essay by Andrew Klevans, excerpts from a 1977 interview with Sirk and rare production stills.
Film Description
Between his twin masterpieces All That Heaven Allows and Written on the Wind, Douglas Sirk created this razor-sharp study of male crisis, both a glittering testament to love's labours lost and his most unforgiving vision of suburban conformity.
Disregarded and neglected by his family, executive toy manufacturer Clifford Groves (Fred MacMurray) is unexpectedly reunited with his former co-worker Norma Miller (Barbara Stanwyck). As the old friends catch up on lost time, his children's suspicions and hostility to the new relationship threaten to push their father away permanently and throw into disarray the lives of all concerned.
With crystalline, noir-tinged cinematography from Russell Metty (Touch of Evil) and heartbreaking performances by Stanwyck and MacMurray, reunited 12 years after Double Indemnity in their final on-screen pairing, There's Always Tomorrow finds one of Hollywood's greatest dramatists at his finest.
Sirk was the director who transcend the traditional 'Woman's Film' into something rich and stage by his simultaneous apotheosis/detonation of the genre, and this littl... more >
Sirk was the director who transcend the traditional 'Woman's Film' into something rich and stage by his simultaneous apotheosis/detonation of the genre, and this little-seen early example of his Hollywood work shows his concept in fascinating embryo. Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray pitch things at exactly the right level. < less
