Saw an excellent movie this evening : "Tomorrow Is Forever" (1946), starring Orson Welles, Claudette Colbert & George Brent, and also featuring a 7 year old Natalie Wood in her first major role. The story is this : The time is November 1918. The end of World War One is at hand. Colbert, an office worker at a large chemical factory in Baltimore, is thrilled because this means her husband (played by Welles) will be coming home. She is ready to celebrate, but when she gets home from work that afternoon, there is a telegram waiting in her mailbox. That dreaded telegram known to all war widows. Her husband was killed on the war's final day.
Suddenly, her life seems over, just as it was about to begin anew. She is distraught, and is also pregnant with Welles' child. Her boss at the factory, played by the always reliable & gentlemanly George Brent, takes her under his wing and has her come live with his aunt, so that she will be supported as she recovers emotionally. Needless to say, Brent falls in love with her and ultimately asks her to marry him. She accepts, and he helps to raise her newborn son as his own.
But the only problem is that her first husband did not actually die. He was missing in action but still alive, though horribly injured (wait a minute, this is all sounding like the Christian Petzold film I watched the other night....).
Twenty years pass, and we are now on the verge of World War Two. Colbert lives happily with Brent and their now grown son (the handsome Richard Long), who is ready to volunteer for the coming war. This is a major plot theme, and I shall say no more.
Then - Holy Smokes - suddenly there is a new hire at the chemical factory : an important top level scientist from Austria arrives. He is badly crippled. Factory boss Brent throws a dinner party and invites the new guest. And when Colbert sees him, she nearly faints.
The "Austrian" is Orson Welles, of course, who has little memory of his pre-war life and former marriage. After being disfigured and nearly killed, he was rescued and given a new life by an Austrian surgeon. Now he is back in America, in Baltimore, and at work in the very chemical factory where his wife once worked, and is now remarried to the owner.
Good Lordy Moses, what a set up. Even better than in the Petzold movie, and that one was great. I must now go on a Brief Tirade about screenwriting, as I often do at such a juncture....
It has got to be mentioned yet again, harped on even, about the level of talent possessed by the screenwriters of the Golden Era. Here you have a 104 minute movie, just 14 minutes over the Ideal Motion Picture Length, and so much drama and story is crammed into that time frame that you feel as if you were watching years of their lives unfold. So much happens! Do you wanna know why, in many modern movies, a lot of car chases and explosions and stuff are substituted to fill out the time, and movies are thus even longer and often more boring? Because the screenwriters have nothing to say, that's why! But in the Golden Era, you had to really be able to write, and in this film the writing is as good as it gets. Several sub-themes are present, including an all-important one on the matter of War, and how it eats up the young. This plot features Richard Long, who is first rate in his role. Orson Welles and Claudette Colbert, two of the greatest screen actors in history, knock their roles far out of the ballpark.
"Tomorrow Is Forever" is a heavy, heavy film - emotional, almost metaphysical, and melodramatic to the core. I think it's one of the heaviest films I've ever seen, actually, especially in dealing with the age-old themes of love and death.
If you were living this movie instead of watching it, you would need to buy the Kleenex factory, or at least buy a werehouse of cartons of the stuff. But since you are just watching it and not living it, a single box should do you.
Me? I am stoic, y'know. :) I do my Kleenexing on the inside, most of the time anyway. :)
But man oh man, What A Movie. I give it 5 Stars, two Huge Thumbs Up.
How great is Orson Welles, anyway? ///////
I have also begun two new books :
1) "Sinister Forces - The Nine : A Grimoire Of American Political Witchcraft, Book One", written by Peter Levenda. The title is a mouthful, but to boil it down, it is the first in a three book series, written about ten years ago, that explores occult influences in American history, in the country's politics and culture. Book One begins with an in depth look at the Salem Witch trials. I am 30 pages in, and am riveted. Hey folks, there is a reason this country is so nuts and has wound up with a clown as President. The Influence Of The Masses is that reason. But who is doing the influencing?
2) The other book I am just starting is called "Remember The Liberty! : Almost Sunk By Treason On The High Seas" by Phillip F. Nelson, who also wrote two of the most important books in American history, about LBJ. Google them if you wish, or better yet, read them, as every American should. The USS Liberty was a spy ship that was stationed in the Middle East during the Six Day War in June 1967, fought between Israel and Egypt and Jordan. On the fourth day of that short war, Israel tried to sink an American ship - the Liberty - and in the process killed 34 American sailors. This incident has been buried in our history. If you wanna know why, it's because the incident was plotted to happen by Lyndon Baines Johnson, our President at the time. He was willing to use the tactic of "having your own killed" and then blaming it on someone else, in order to have a reason to get into a war.
Shades of the Reichstag Fire, orchestrated by Hitler.
Yes, folks, we have had events in American history, even recent ones, that are every bit as heinous as those of the Nazis or other nefarious regimes. And in LBJ, we had the closest thing to Our Hitler, Trump notwithstanding because he's Too Stupid To Pull Off What LBJ Pulled Off.
So, what I say is, "do your reading if you wish". I know that not everyone has the time. My "thing" is reading, and research, but I know it's not everyone's bag.
But at the very least, please be aware of What Has Really Happened In The United States Of America.
Not just the lame, half-baked stuff you see and hear on CNN or or any other media.
Don't waste your time watching that stuff. Is is a "garbage cycle", designed to get you hooked and keep you on edge without ever revealing to you the deeper issues that have caused the grevious problems we now face.
Don't watch news.
Instead, read Real History, researched by Dedicated Journalists, who really do give a Flying One about this country and the world.
That's all for tonight.
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