Runner-Up Of Vet Homecomings
Till The End Of Time (1946) Is Best Years At Half The Sit
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posted by John McElwee at 10:30 AM
Thursday, December 11, 2014
Till The End Of Time (1946) Is Best Years At Half The Sit
6 Comments:
My guess is that lots of WWI American vets never saw actual combat, or only a few months of it, given that we were officially in the war only 18 months (add in training time, etc.) Where WWII lasted 3-1/2 years for America and many soldiers no doubt saw most of that.
Craig Reardon shares some interesting observations on the topic of "Till The End Of Time" (Part One):
John,
I really enjoyed your thorough discussion of "Till the End of Time". Just the title alone [adapted from a book, perhaps? I sped through the post, but not so fast I didn't enjoy your analysis/appreciation] has that touch of 'something bigger' that movies once routinely returned to again and again, the romantic (or more properly, Romantic capital 'R') quality. Today of course they serve up these symphonic compositions of CGI stuff out of the book of Revelation, but it's not Romantic in the least. In fact, it's PED-antic. That thing can only be accessed through movies of the '20s through the...well, the cut-off is not so easy to determine, is it? There are occasional trailings as we move forward toward out own rather drear time, today, signifying the lingering death of Romanticism. I thoroughly understand that movies like this one appears to be, much less something like "Since You Went Away", cannot fly today. All the more reason to enjoy them, even cherish them now, when there is a dearth of such material. It's not an accident that Fox's great adaptation of "Jane Eyre" came out the same year as "Since You Went Away", in my opinion (along with "Song of Bernadette".) They all reflect that enlarged, giddy, bigger-than-life quality, strongly buttressed by their musical scores (Herrmann, Steiner, and Newman from left to right!) In fact, I wonder who provided the music for this one? It being RKO, I can only suppose it was Roy Webb, the one-man band there, or Leigh Harline perhaps. Webb never really rang the bell for me, though his scores occasionally impress on a lower level. I mean, I like "Mighty Joe Young", and "Blood Alley", to name two extremely-at-random!
Part Two from Craig Reardon:
As for the grim, very un-Romantic reality this picture aims to address, I can only think of one dad among my peer group who, I discovered, had had a 'close encounter' with the enemy in WW2...and had had to carry that with him, of course, 'till the end of his life. As I heard it, he'd been set upon by a Japanese soldier...that'd have been shortened to "a Jap" in any anecdote decades ago, of course...and had to fight for his life, hand-to-hand, and obviously prevailed. I was gauche enough---and cringe, remembering it---to bring it up with him at a particular gathering. I feel so badly about this now, not only due to the obvious insensitivity, but in addition the real fact that I hardly even KNEW the guy. I knew his sons rather well, but I very rarely saw him. An extremely nice guy, whose bluff amiability was evenly distributed among his four boys. Anyway, being the natural gentleman, or to pursue the cliché, 'gentle man' he was---in spite of being good-looking and athletic enough to be on a Wheaties box---he responded in so muted a manner that it was clear to me, in spite of my curiosity and maladroit fascination, that he didn't wish to talk about it. I should think not. And I wasn't so dumb that I did not drop it, immediately. It's terrible, really terrible to think that as boys we are drawn to such reports, excited, and impressed to think that somebody we can see right in front of us was actually a victor in a life-or-death struggle. Why must it take growing older to appreciate that war is a boondoggle that forces innocent men on BOTH sides to kill and to be killed? It's still something I unconsciously set aside in some convenient room in my brain when I watch an old-style propaganda war picture. But it sells the best of those short, too, because really the best ones do NOT sidestep that, but meet it head on ("All Quiet On the Western Front", "The Story of G.I. Joe", "Battleground", et al.)
As for Guy Madison, I still have vague---very vague, as time goes by!---recollection of watching "Wild Bill Hickok", a TV show starring Madison and the lovable Andy Devine, whose hoarse "I'm comin', Bill!!" still echoes in the back chambers of my mental playback speakers. Madison, whether able or not, was obviously an uncommonly good-looking young guy, my God. Me, I think a lot of today's crop get by on THEIR looks just as much as somebody like Madison did, back then. He also has the air (even in your generous selection of stills and clippings on this film) of a man who appears to be completely comfortable in his own skin, even the match of Mitchum, so famously-so. And, I had to laugh to myself, as there are a couple of pictures of Mitchum in this post, his looks not quite 'set' as they became for us movie fans by the 1950s, where he looks arguably homely/weird next to the Greek god looks of Madison. But, look who made it to the end of the line in the A list, or B+...? Alcoholism and other misadventures notwithstanding. That's the difference between looks and personality/talent. Plus, as 'Mitch' once unforgettably stated, "Going to a school to learn acting is like trying to learn to be tall." He always put things in a way that couldn't be misunderstood!
Dan Mercer recalls another postwar reflection, "From This Day Forward":
There was another film released in 1946 which dealt with the struggle of a serviceman to enter civilian life again, "From This Day Forward." It was also probably a package developed by David O. Selznick and sold to RKO, as it stars Joan Fontaine, then under contract to him, with the producer being William Pererira, who was the production designer for "Jane Eyre," which Selznick had developed before selling it to 20th Century-Fox.
Compared to "The Best Years of Our Lives" and "Till the End of Time," however, the effect of the war is almost tangential to the story. It begins with a young serviceman, played by Mark Stevens in his first leading role, being interviewed in a government employment assistance office. What follows is told in flashback, as he marries but struggles to find employment in Depression-era America. He loses job after job and has to depend on his wife's position as a clerk in a bookstore to get by. Of course, the marriage is placed under great strain by the financial circumstances they suffer through. Then the war comes and he joins the army, which brings us back to the government office and the interview. Little is made of his war experiences or how they affected him. Perhaps this isn't surprising, considering that the source material was a novel by Thomas Bell published in 1936, "All Brides are Beautiful." The war thus becomes a kind of segue between the Depression and its hopelessness and the postwar era, with the possibility of hope, but it is a hope not formed out of the war, but from a belief in a new order brought about by the government.
"From this Day Forward" has been described as the "most expressively optimistic film of the postwar left." No doubt one would look to the artistic talent behind the camera for that. John Berry, the director and an alumnus of the Mercury Theatre, would later take flight to France when he came to the attention of the House Un-American Activities Committee, and the writer of the screenplay, Hugo Butler, would be blacklisted. Clifford Odets also worked on the screenplay and would be a friendly witness for the House Committee against Barry.
None of this is apparent in the advertising, of course. Joan Fontaine's name is featured above the title in the posters, with such tag lines as "Kiss and Run Story of Modern Marriage" and "When the Honeymoon fades out." The casual movie-goer, walking down a city boulevard looking for a show, would have been forgiven for thinking that this was a Joan Fontaine vehicle dealing with a domestic arrangement, and nothing having to do with the war. He would not have been too far off the mark, though Miss Fontaine might have disagreed with him, so far as it being a vehicle for her. This was her last picture under the Selznick contract.
That uncropped photo of the three male leads makes me laugh. I can hear the photographer: "OK, boys, pretend you're walking, and point -- and don't forget to give me your best smile!" What else could he have possibly said? Even at this stage of his career, Mitchum must have wanted to throw up.
"It's terrible, really terrible to think that as boys we are drawn to such reports, excited, and impressed to think that somebody we can see right in front of us was actually a victor in a life-or-death struggle. Why must it take growing older to appreciate that war is a boondoggle that forces innocent men on BOTH sides to kill and to be killed?"
It must take more than just growing older, since we still have old men forcing naive young men to go off and do their fighting for them.
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