Perfect Strangers (1945)

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Movie
Original title Perfect Strangers
Country of production United Kingdom
original language English
Publishing year 1945
length 102 minutes
Rod
Director Alexander Korda
script Clemence Dane
Anthony Pelissier
production Alexander Korda
music Clifton Parker
camera Georges Périnal
cut Edward B. Jarvis
occupation

Perfect Strangers is a 1945 British drama film directed by Alexander Korda and starring Robert Donat and Deborah Kerr .

action

London 1940, at the beginning of the Battle of Britain . Robert and Cathy Wilson are a rather shy, almost shy couple. He is an accountant, she is bored as a housewife through the gray everyday life of her marriage. One day World War II begins to dramatically change your average life too, and nothing is the same as it used to be. Robert is called up and joins the Royal Navy as she joins the Women's Royal Navy Service, the Wrens , against his will . In the following three years the two spouses are separated, which by the way is good for their relationship, because the two shy young Britons begin to gain self-confidence, each for themselves. Cathy, for example, is now starting to look around to her right and left thanks to the encouragement from her new friend Dizzy Clayton. She goes out with Dizzy's cousin, naval architect Richard, who promptly falls in love with her. Even if Cathy now only really recognizes the marital wasteland with her husband, she remains loyal to him.

For Robert the war becomes an even more decisive experience. The service on the high seas turns the effeminate civilian into a "whole guy", and Robert finally rises to the rank of sergeant. He burned his hands badly in a skirmish in which his ship sank, but he rowed the lifeboat across the sea for five days without complaining. Back on solid ground under his feet, he is immediately taken to a hospital, where the nice nurse Elena takes care of him. On the last evening of his hospital stay, Robert dares to ask Elena for a dinner together. He feels attracted to the young woman, but she informs him in a friendly but firm manner that she has only been a widow for six months and makes it clear to him that she is not yet ready for a new relationship. Elena kisses Robert goodbye and leaves him alone. When Cathy and Robert get ten days home leave, neither of the two is happy about it - they are too afraid of having to return to the gray everyday life of marriage with the other.

While Robert is still waiting at home for his Cathy, his wife simply cannot bring herself to return to his home and hearth and the wasteland that awaits there. Instead, she speaks to him on the phone and suggests meeting him on “more neutral ground”. She tells him she won't come back to him. He is relieved and, much to her surprise, agrees to a divorce. Together they go to a pub, where each of the two begins to notice the change in their spouse. They are amazed to find that they are actually “perfect strangers”. And maybe that's exactly what brings them back together and arouses mutual interest again. When you meet Robert's friend Scotty in the bar, Robert slips out an unflattering description of the "old" Cathy to the new one, which hurts them deeply when she learns about Scotty. On the way home there was another argument on the street and the decision was made to get a divorce after all. It is only late in the evening that they realize what both changes really mean for their relationship with one another. Cathy shows Robert symbolically how the walls that used to block her windows collapsed in the bombing and the apartment now appears to be flooded with light. You look out over the devastated city and realize that anything can be rebuilt no matter how long it takes. Then they both kiss.

Production notes

Perfect Strangers was made in the late phase of the Second World War , from the end of May 1944, in London and Scotland and was premiered in August 1945 in the British capital. The mass start was on October 15 of the same year. There was no German performance. In the USA, the film, which was shortened by around ten minutes, was distributed under the title Vacation From Marriage since November 1, 1945 .

The author Clemence Dane received an Oscar for her story in 1947 .

Alexander Korda's brother Vincent Korda designed the film structures. The Austrian emigrant Ferdinand Bellan helped him. Muir Mathieson conducted the London Symphony Orchestra . The special effects created Percy Day. The later 007 actor Roger Moore can be seen in a tiny role as a soldier .

Originally, the US director should Wesley Ruggles those of the Hollywood studios on behalf of the London offshoot MGM stage commissioned film under Kordas production sovereignty, but after there had been between Korda and Ruggles disagreements, the producer decided according to a report of the Hollywood Reporter from May 1944 to take over the directing himself.

Reviews

The Anglo-American reviews were largely positive, with a few caveats.

The Movie & Video Guide stated that “Donat and Kerr would sparkle”.

Halliwell's Film Guide noted that the film was "a pleasant comedy with good actors, but the reversal of two such cartoons really wears out credibility."

The New York Times said the film "shines with laughter and honesty."

US film critic James Agee found that the film's greatest weakness was its failure to show "how a short-term exuberant couple sinks uncontrollably back under their peacetime stone".

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Background report in the catalog of the American Film Institute
  2. ^ Leonard Maltin : Movie & Video Guide, 1996 edition, p. 1402
  3. ^ Leslie Halliwell : Halliwell's Film Guide, Seventh Edition, New York 1989, p. 790
  4. ↑ cit. n. ibid.
  5. ↑ cit. n. ibid.

Web links