There is always a tomorrow
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | There is always a tomorrow |
| Original title | There's Always Tomorrow |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1956 |
| length | 84 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Douglas Sirk |
| script | Bernard C. Schoenfeld |
| production |
Ross Hunter for Universal Pictures |
| music |
Herman Stein , Heinz Roemheld |
| camera | Russell Metty |
| cut | William Morgan |
| occupation | |
| |
There's Always Tomorrow (Original title: There's Always Tomorrow ) is an American Filmmelodram directed by Douglas Sirk from the year 1956 .
action
Clifford Groves, a middle-aged toy manufacturer, lives in Pasadena , California , with his wife Marion and their three children Vinnie, Ellen and Frankie in a cozy home. The family life seems perfect, but Clifford has been secretly bothered by the boring routine of his life for years. With Marion, who is perfectly absorbed in her world as a housewife and mother, romantic moments for two have become a rarity. Clifford's relationship with his children runs smoothly, but very superficially, since the children hardly pay any attention to him and see him only as a provider of money. He feels like a toy figure he designed, the mechanical "talk-and-walk robot".
One evening, Clifford unexpectedly meets Norma Miller Vale, a former work colleague with whom he had a close relationship over 20 years ago. Norma visits California for business reasons and has since become a successful and self-confident fashion designer. In her private life, however, she often feels lonely - since she has been divorced for a long time and has no children. She envies Clifford's family life. Since Clifford got tickets for a theater show, but everyone in the family has different plans, he takes Norma with him and they spend a harmonious evening together.
A few days later, Clifford wants to take Marion on a long-planned, often postponed weekend vacation for two at a holiday resort. When the daughter Frankie hurts her ankle slightly, Marion decides to stay with her daughter. Therefore, Clifford has to go on the short vacation alone. He meets Norma who happens to be there and spends two exciting and funny days with her. Unannounced, Clifford's eldest son Vinnie drives to the resort with his girlfriend Ann and two other friends . Vinnie overhears his father laughing with her in Norma's apartment and immediately believes it is an affair. He does not confront his father with the suspicion, but lets his sister Ellen in. Ann defends Clifford and builds on his character. She believes in a harmless explanation of the story and criticizes her friend Vinnie for his childish suspicions.
When Norma is invited to dinner at the Groves the next day, Vinnie and Ellen attract attention for their rude behavior and leave the table early. Vinnie later spies on his father and overhears part of a phone call with Norma that reinforces his suspicions. Marion, on the other hand, has no inkling of her children's suspicion of fraud against her father. Compared to Clifford, she said in a friendly but at the same time casual tone that his recent irritation can be explained by too much work and too much stress and that he should take it easy. Clifford slowly realizes that he loves Norma and invites her to dinner. Norma, through hints from Ann, suspects the turmoil going on within the family and cancels dinner for another business meeting. Clifford goes to see Norma anyway and surprisingly kisses her, who had loved Clifford 20 years ago. He confesses his love for her and wants to leave his family for her too, but Norma demands time to think.
The next day, Norma is visited by Vinnie and Ellen at her hotel. The children initially reproach her, but Norma points out to the children that if they had shown their love to their father, he would not have looked for them outside their family. Therefore, they should value their father more. The children take Norma's words to heart and ask her not to destroy their parents' marriage. Shortly thereafter, Norma Clifford explains that although she has feelings for him, she will fly back to New York that same day. She explains to him that his crush on her is only an attempt to win back a piece of youth and that he would later regret leaving his family. In the evening, Clifford returns to his family. Vinnie has since given up his suspicions and made up with Ann by admitting to her his childish behavior. Family life seems perfect again, meanwhile Clifford looks longingly out the window at the plane flying to New York, in which a crying Norma is sitting. Marion appears and asks her husband if he is better now, and takes his hand.
background
A now forgotten story by Ursula Parrott (1900–1957) from the early 1930s served as a template for the film . Parrott had become famous in the Roaring Twenties through bestselling novels such as Ex-Wife , but her work was forgotten during her lifetime. As early as 1934, Universal had filmed the material for the first time under the title There's Always Tomorrow . Directed by Edward Sloman , Frank Morgan played the discontented husband. In the other roles Binnie Barnes played as his old childhood sweetheart, Lois Wilson as his wife and the young, then largely unknown Robert Taylor as his son.
Douglas Sirk originally wanted to shoot the film in expensive Technicolor colors, the brilliant use of which many of his films are now particularly known for, but had to be content with black and white on the instructions of his studio . The leading actors Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray and Joan Bennett had been established as Hollywood stars since the 1930s, although they increasingly switched to character roles in the 1950s due to their age . Stanwyck and MacMurray, who play two people who used to be closely related, had previously appeared together in three films: the comedy Die Unforgettable Christmas Night (1940), the Western The Moonlighter (1942) and Billy Wilder's film noir classic Woman Without a Conscience (1944). A year earlier, William Reynolds had played the conservative son of Jane Wyman's character in Sirks What Heaven Permits , who is upset about his mother's relationship with a younger nursery owner. In this film, Sirk Reynolds plays a similar role again: as a suspicious son who doesn't want his mother to be hurt.
Content analysis
Unlike most of the melodramas of the 1950s, There's Always Tomorrow focuses on the isolation of the male protagonist. Sirk first wanted to have the final scene played in Clifford's toy workshop. While Clifford would have looked out the window, the running robot - standing symbolically for Clifford - would have fallen from the table and would have continued to turn helplessly on the floor "in complete hopelessness". That could have been understood as an indication of an imminent suicide by Clifford. Later he decided on an "unhappy happy ending" that takes place inside the Groves' house: on the outside, Marion and Clifford are reunited and walk through their home together, but she still considers his problems to be of a health nature and has his inner being not really understood, although she claims just that in the final scene. In the last shot, the children watch the couple through the bars of the stairs: "(...) the couple is looked at by their curious children through the bars of the windows as if they were caged monkeys in a zoo," Sirk later explained to the last Setting of the film.
Christopher Sharrett wrote for Cineaste that the film shows the difficulties of family life as well as the consequences of a patriarchal society for the family patriarch himself. Sharretts interprets Clifford's profession, which is different from the original, in the direction that Sirk points to the difficult responsibility of bringing up children: In In the USA, the baby boom and toy market flourished in the 1950s . The many toys in the picture indicate the pressure of the parents to provide for the child materially, as well as criticism of a certain indulgence and overabundance in upbringing. Elisabeth Läufer points out that Clifford had hardly taken part in family life due to his professional duties and was therefore excluded. After Clifford had succeeded in advancing his career in the toy manufacture, it was now clear to him that something essential in life was missing in love. In other Sirk films like In den Wind, it is mainly materially carefree characters who notice that there was no time for emotions in the search for success. In addition to Clifford, this also applies to Norma, who as a modern and independent businesswoman was able to fight for a place among men, but had to pay for it with a lonely private life. Marion is contrasted with her as a typical housewife of the 1950s, who is satisfied with her life, but alienated from her husband through his work.
Elisabeth Läufer pointed out the subversive irony and black humor that can be felt in many parts of the film, right at the beginning: After seeing the optimistic sounding film title and the opening credits "Once Upon a Time in Sunny California ...", you will shown a rainy road right at the beginning. In addition to the hint that human life cannot always be happy, the "Once Upon a Time" signal at the beginning of the film that the fates and feelings shown in the film rule in many families and are universal . As in Sirk's previous films, he stylistically indicates the imprisonment and social constraints of his characters through lattice structures and mirrors in the Mise en Scène . At the end of the film, many questions remained unanswered, such as whether Marion really hadn't noticed her husband's emotional chaos or whether the children permanently change their behavior towards their father: “If the children ignore Norma's sermon for the future, everything stays the same. There is always a tomorrow. Either way."
synchronization
The film never came into cinemas in West Germany, but only had its premiere on December 12, 1973 on ARD . The German synchronization was created for this occasion.
| role | actor | German Dubbing voice |
|---|---|---|
| Norma Miller Vale | Barbara Stanwyck | Sigrid Lagemann |
| Clifford Groves | Fred MacMurray | Joachim Cadenbach |
| Marion Groves | Joan Bennett | Dagmar Altrichter |
| Vinnie Groves | William Reynolds | Hans-Georg Panczak |
| Ann | Pat Crowley | Joseline Gassen |
| Mrs. Rogers, Groves cook | Jane Darwell | Ursula War |
Reviews
The contemporary critics of the film were mostly not very enthusiastic. Bosley Crowther wrote for the New York Times that the moral of the movie is to feel sorry for your father - so you shouldn't take him to the movies with you to There's Always a Tomorrow .
Later reviews of There's Always a Tomorrow , on the other hand, were mostly positive, which also has to do with the increased reputation of director Douglas Sirk in later years. However, in the opinion of critic Christopher Sharrett, despite its appreciation by many film historians, the film is still overshadowed by more famous films such as What Heaven Allowed and As Long as There Are People , which Sirk also directed in the 1950s. There is always a morning that is probably the “snappiest portrait” of American suburban life by Sirk, according to Sharrett. Adultery, one of the riskiest issues at the time, was handled with “wit and intelligence”. Towards the end, Clifford's return to his family seems very formulaic, as in typical Hollywood films, but the subversive and ironic final scene is one of “Sirk's best”. Duncan Gray from Mubi attributes the film's low level of awareness compared to other Sirk melodramas to the fact that Rock Hudson in the cast and radiant Technicolor colors would be missing two of Sirk's trademarks.
The film service writes: "One of the melodramas by Douglas Sirk, which was later rated by international critics as 'masterpieces of soulful cinema'." Sean Axleitner wrote that the film was the "most depressing representation of suburban middle class life" one can find in American cinema the 1950s. He also praised the portrayal of Barbara Stanwyck. In his criticism, Dave Kehr mainly dealt with Sirk's use of light and shadow: It was a “virtuoso study in tones”, because while the holiday resort was shown in blinding sunlight, the suburban house of the unfortunate family man was bathed in expressionist shadows.
Web links
- There is always a tomorrow in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Michael LaPointe: The Racy Jazz Age Best Seller You've Never Heard Of. In: The Paris Review. February 12, 2019, accessed October 21, 2019 .
- ↑ There's Always Tomorrow 1934 (IMDb). Retrieved October 21, 2019 .
- ↑ Douglas Sirk's There's Always Tomorrow (Web Exclusive). Retrieved October 21, 2019 (American English).
- ↑ Elisabeth Läufer: Douglas Sirk: Skeptiker des Lichts. Fischer Cinema, 1987, p. 144.
- ↑ Film releases : There is always a tomorrow. Retrieved October 21, 2019 .
- ↑ Tom Ryan: The Films of Douglas Sirk: Exquisite Ironies and Magnificent Obsessions . Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2019, ISBN 978-1-4968-2238-3 ( google.de [accessed October 21, 2019]).
- ↑ Douglas Sirk's There's Always Tomorrow (Web Exclusive). Retrieved October 21, 2019 (American English).
- ↑ Elisabeth Läufer: Douglas Sirk: Skeptiker des Lichts. Fischer Cinema, 1987, p. 145.
- ↑ Elisabeth Läufer: Douglas Sirk: Skeptiker des Lichts. Fischer Cinema, 1987, p. 143.
- ↑ Pacing in Unlocked Rooms: Douglas Sirk and “There's Always Tomorrow” on Notebook. Retrieved October 21, 2019 .
- ↑ Elisabeth Läufer: Douglas Sirk: Skeptiker des Lichts. Fischer Cinema, 1987, p. 145.
- ↑ Film title Casts Film Cast list Movie Cast Characters - synchrondatenbank.de. Retrieved October 21, 2019 .
- ↑ There's Always Tomorrow (1955) - IMDb. Retrieved October 21, 2019 .
- ↑ Bosley Crowther: Screen: Domestic Tale; Palace Has 'There's Always Tomorrow' . In: The New York Times . January 21, 1956, ISSN 0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed October 21, 2019]).
- ↑ Douglas Sirk's There's Always Tomorrow (Web Exclusive). Retrieved October 21, 2019 (American English).
- ↑ Pacing in Unlocked Rooms: Douglas Sirk and “There's Always Tomorrow” on Notebook. Retrieved October 21, 2019 .
- ↑ There is always a tomorrow. Retrieved October 21, 2019 .
- ^ There's Always Tomorrow (1956). Retrieved October 21, 2019 .
- ↑ Dave Kehr: There's Always Tomorrow. Retrieved October 21, 2019 .