I finished that last movie post earlier than usual Sunday evening, and my wife and I decided, after determining that no interesting Masterpiece was showing on PBS, to watch another of the 100+ (yes, really) movies and other programs saved on the DVR. As it was almost 9, we really didn't want to sit there for two hours, so I looked for something that we might be content to stop watching halfway through. Scrolling through the list, rejecting one thing after another because it just didn't look like what one or the other of us felt like watching, or because it looked like something we wouldn't be able to stop once started, I ended up back in mid-2011, with a movie I'd recorded on a whim from TCM on the basis of a one-sentence synopsis: "An Austrian couple fleeing from the Nazis commits suicide and awakens on a mysterious ship along with several people killed in a London air raid." It was made in 1944 and was called Between Two Worlds. (Maybe the title had been part of the reason I'd recorded it, too.)
It turned out to be a really fine movie. I would say it's an overlooked gem except that maybe it's not–just because I'd never heard of it doesn't mean nobody else has. I found out afterwards that it's based on a very successful 1923 play called Outward Bound, and I really wonder whether C.S. Lewis knew the play, because its treatment of death, judgment, heaven, and hell bears strong similarity to that in The Great Divorce. I think the movie's theology is a bit shaky in places, but the essential idea that we are even now making ourselves into people of heaven or of hell, and that in the end it is our choice, is very much like Lewis's.
The acting is almost uniformly top-notch, the cinematography is good, the quality of the print is excellent (not always the case with these older movies), and although I wasn't paying close attention to it I think the score by Korngold has some passages that would stand alone. (I thought Paul Henreid who plays the suicide was not exactly suited to play a character who is constantly referred to as a young man, because he looks to be in his late thirties at least, but there was nothing wrong with his acting. I kept thinking he looked familiar–it's because he played Victor Laszlo in Casablanca.)
So much for getting to bed on time. We hardly budged from the couch for the full two hours.
Someone has posted the whole thing on YouTube, but I don't recommend watching it there, as the video quality is so poor. I've looked around for information on the playwright, Sutton Vane, but haven't found much more than what is available in the Wikipedia entry.
**
Also, I remembered a movie that should have been in the Sunday night list: Mrs. Miniver. This is another English World War II story, which I think was recommended to me here by Rob G. It's a story of the impact of the beginning of the war on an upper-middle class English family and is quite powerful, and very well done. I thought it was a bit heavy-handed toward the end in its exhortations for courage and tenacity in the war, but considering that it was made early in the war when the outcome was certainly not assured, I think that can be forgiven.
Light On Dark Water 
Leave a reply to Janet Cancel reply