I’ll Be Seeing You (1944)
Directed by William Dieterle and George Cukor
Selznick International Pictures / United Artists
William Dieterle directed this film, which is a David O. Selznick production starring Joseph Cotten as a shellshocked Army officer on leave and Ginger Rogers as a prisoner on an eight-day furlough.
Based on a radio play called “Double Furlough,” I’ll Be Seeing You is bittersweet and beautifully acted. The nature of Rogers’s crime is not explained until well into the film, and Cotten’s mental condition is hinted at, but not made explicit until the viewer has gotten a chance to know the characters.
The film overall is great, but there’s one scene in particular that really stayed with me. Cotten and Rogers go to a flag-waving war movie and the camera stays on his face while the viewer hears the sounds of explosions, gunfire, and screaming. Cotten holds his hand to his chin, desperately trying to keep his composure during the date. It’s an upsetting scene, and it’s surprising to see such a realistic, sensitive portrayal of post-traumatic stress disorder in a film made while American involvement in World War II was at its peak.
I’ll Be Seeing You beautifully depicts a fragile, growing romance between two likable people who each have something they desperately try to hide from the other. Not only is this a beautifully told love story, it’s also a great story about how hard it is to trust someone else, even when your happiness and sanity both depend on it.
Dick Powell was known as a song-and-dance man when he was cast as hard-boiled dick Philip Marlowe in this adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s novel Farewell, My Lovely.
In an effort to more deeply penetrate the pop culture of the 1940s and 1950s, I’ve been listening to radio shows and watching old movies pretty much in the order they were released. I’ve been doing this for awhile, but since we have to start somewhere, we’re starting on December 1st, 1944. World War II was in full swing in both Europe and the Pacific, and a little film called House of Frankenstein was released in theaters in the United States.
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