Since You Went Away
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Movie Reviews of Since You Went Away
Movie Review: Since You Went Away
Summary: 4 Stars
Good, old-fashioned tear-jerker, starring Claudette Colbert as the mother of Jennifer Jones and Shirley Temple. Dad is away at war. Enter Robert Walker as the love interest for Jennifer. He happens to be the grandson of Monty Wooley, the lodger of the house of the three ladies. Joseph Cotten and Hattie McDaniel round out a WONDERFUL cast.Movie Review: The four most important words since Gone With the Wind....
Summary: 3 Stars
A woman and her two daughters try to cope after her husband goes off to war in 1944's SINCE YOU WENT AWAY, a four-hankie weepie made during World War II. Boasting an all-star cast, Gone With the Wind's producer David O. Selznick, and epic length (nearly 3-hours, with intermission), this movie should be a revered classic. However, like Gone With the Wind, it hasn't aged all that well.
You can't, for the most part, fault the cast. The redoubtable Claudette Colbert could play `ideal woman' with the best of them, and here her ability to portray quiet yearning for her departed husband is one of the movie's biggest assets. The `ideal' theme is punctuated by Joseph Cotten, here an artist turned navy commander who loves old flame Anne Hilton from a flirtatious yet unbridgeable distance. Agnes Moorehead as the somewhat shrill `bad' statesider is also effective. Love to see those that sneer at rationing get their comeuppance, even if I have to wait nearly three hours for it. The revelation, though, is Robert Walker as the "Golly gee" youth who finds love with one of Colbert's daughters, played by Walker's then real-life wife Jennifer Jones, shortly before his unit is due to ship out. The only other movie I've seen Walker in was Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train, in which he plays probably the best film psychopath ever. His role in this movie is as far away from Bruno Anthony as can be imagined, and it's terribly affecting.
Monty Woolley, who made something of a career out of playing curmudgeons coming to dinner and nesting in a spare room, here plays a curmudgeonly retired colonel who rents a room from cash-strapped Colbert. That he's the estranged grandfather of sweet young Robert Walker is a happy coincidence. Shirley Temple, Colbert's other daughter, made something of a career out of charming old curmudgeons and crying on cue, both of which traits are severely tested by this movie. It was effective when she was six, but at sixteen I found it, well, annoying. In fact, both the Woolley and the Temple characters seemed a little convenient, a little phony. Temple because she couldn't act, Woolley because he was too much Sheridan Whiteside from The Man Who Came to Dinner. If they merely annoyed, Hattie McDaniel's `Fidelia' shocked and offended. Fidelia was the Hilton's maid until Tim Hilton enlistment, at which point she was let go because the family could no longer afford her. The movie has her returning to the Hiltons, as their maid, for no money because... well, because she loves the family so much and she can't stand to see them try to survive without her. So, after her day job she will come `home' and play maid for the Hiltons.
Look, I realize SINCE YOU WENT AWAY is supposed to be a sentimental celebration of the loved ones on the home front. Much of it is moving and touching, especially the parts played by Cotten and Walker. The rest seem conceits embraced by the greatest generation but dropped by their heirs.
Movie Review: A Long, Emotional Experience
Summary: 3 Stars
The cast is tremendous in here; lots of big names. That's the good news, at least for most male viewers, because the bad news- again, for us males - is that this is a woman's movie from start-to-finish. For you ladies, this movie is gold!
From the moment Claudette Colbert comes home after seeing her husband off for war, the tears start and the women's soap opera begins. It goes on and on, too, because this film is almost three hours long. That is a lot of time for a lot of heartaches. How many hankies is that? It has to be the whole Kleenex box!
I'm not making fun of it. The topic - women seeing their men off to war and never knowing if they'll come back alive - has been a tragic one since mankind began.
The cast in here was astonishing with people such as Jennifer Jones, Joseph Cotten, Guy Madison, Shirley Temple, Monty Whooley, Hattie McDaniel, Agnes Moorhead, Craig Stevens, Keenan Wynn, Robert Walker and Lionel Barrymore.
I found no fault with any of them expect perhaps Temple, whose young-adult roles never matched her little girl performances, except for "The Bachelor and The Bobbysoxer."
It was interesting to see a young Stevens, who 15 years later starred in television's "Peter Gunn" series. It also was a bit odd seeing Jones and Walker together because they got divorced in 1944, the same year this movie was released. This must have been awkward for them to film since they obviously were not doing well in their real-life marriage.
This movie isn't all tears. There are some genuinely warm moments in here, including a very nice Christmas scene. People generations ago were more hopeful and optimistic, too. Today's world is much more cynical, so this film makes some critics unhappy because they think the people are too goody-goody. Well, too bad for them. For me, that's part of the charm of classic era movies: nicer attitudes.
The photography was pretty good, too. There are lots of lights-and-shadows. Is the too long and should it have been edited? Yes, but it's still an emotional experience for many viewers, even 65 years later.
Movie Review: World War II movie
Summary: 3 Stars
This movie should have been restored before it's release. The casting is so off kilter, what was Selznick thiking??? Claudette Colbert playing Jennifer Jones mother. Colbert looks the same age.
Shirley Temple still acting cutesy and petulant like the child actress she once was. Joseph Cotton playing the best friend of Colberts missing husband in the war. Cotton so handsome in his Navy uniform...please in real life he and Colbert would be loves instantly. This is the story of UPPER MIDDLE class american certainly no relations to the actual lives of the working people who worked and slaved in the factories and shipyards and all the rationing and the hardships made on them. When the War was declared young men were drafted and the women and draft exempt men came into the cities to work in the factories most of them from the farms. There were no places for them to live.
So people rented out rooms in their houses. This would have made an more interessting story of the actual lives of real people.
Movie Review: *Shrugs*
Summary: 3 Stars
Since You Went Away is the epitome of a family war film. It is so standard, that one will be able to guess what happens next throughout the film. Although it is certainly filled with heartwarming moments, most of them seem artificial and therefore less emotional.
The film has an amazing cast, headed by the beautiful Claudette Colbert. She is perhaps the best in the film but also very standard. She makes her character believable, but unfortunately is boring.
The lighting is really great; the cameraman and the director seemed to have a great grasp on the use of light and shadow. However, beautiful photography does not save a film.
It is obvious that Selznik's company meant for this to be an important film. There is an overture and an intermission just the way there is in Gone With the Wind, but the difference is that Gone With the Wind is an amazing film and this one comes off as being just okay.