Main Cast: Dick Powell, Linda Darnell, Jack Oakie, Edgar Kennedy, Edward S. Brophy
Release Year: 1944
Country: US
Run Time: 84 minutes
Plot
On the eve of their 50th anniversary, a couple argue about whether or not to reveal a story from the husband's past that explains how they met and came to be married. We flashback to the mid-1890's and Larry Stevens' (Dick Powell} first day on the job as a reporter for a New York newspaper -- celebrating his release from writing obituaries with a few too many beers, he and his colleagues start to listen to aging newspaper employee Pop Benson (John Philliber) talk about the past and the future, and the fact that to him they're interchangeable. Larry goes out with his friends to check out a clairvoyant act featuring Cigolini, a phony Italian mystic (Jack Oakie), and a very pretty woman assistant, Sylvia Smith (Linda Darnell). He starts to woo Sylvia, who resists his charms, before heading back to the newspaper, where he meets Pop, who hands him what he says is the newspaper he wanted -- it's only later that Larry realizes that he has tomorrow night's newspaper, and that one story concerns a robbery at the opera house. He gets to the performance that night, with Sylvia accompanying him (at first unwillingly) and witnesses the robbery, writing it up before the police can even leave the scene. His editor (George Cleveland) is ecstatic, but police inspector Mulrooney (Edgar Kennedy) wants to know how Larry knew about the robbery. Sylvia tries to protect him by claiming that she predicted it in her act, and to cover herself and Larry she predicts the drowning of a woman that night in the river. Meanwhile, Larry meets Pop again, who tells him of tomorrow's paper and its account of his attempted rescue of a drowning woman -- he later realizes that the woman is Sylvia, attempting to save him and having to fake a drowning to convince the police of her predictions; he runs to the river and dives in to rescue her. By this time, the two of them are totally involved with each other emotionally, but now Larry must face a new threat. Pop appears again and hands him a newspaper from the next day, which includes a front page story about Larry being shot and killed at the St.George Hotel. Larry vows to avoid the hotel at all costs, and even tries to get some good out of the paper by betting on the winners in five consecutive horse races that afternoon; but it seems that no matter what he does to stay away, he's destined to be at the hotel, at the appointed time. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
Review
Rene Clair's It Happened Tomorrow (1944) represents a kind of fantasy film that they not only don't make anymore, but wouldn't conceive of making in this way today. It should, on its face, resemble a cross between a Twilight Zone episode and Somewhere In Time, about a pair of lovers (Dick Powell, Linda Darnell) who are destined to meet but also destined to be parted, all by the strange forces surrounding one of them. Instead, Clair makes this into a charming romantic comedy as much as a fantasy film. rather close in spirit to Ernst Lubitsch's Heaven Can Wait (1943). Indeed, the fantasy elements are used as the basis for some surprisingly affecting romantic displays by the characters, sacrificing some haunting mystery elements in favor of a much more beguilingly sentimental story. Period films were considered poison in the early 1940's, and Clair covered his bases there by framing his story around the 50th anniversary of the couple -- which places the film in 1944, the year in which it was released. Clair thus gave It Happened Tomorrow an immediacy in its own time that the movie would have lacked, had it taken place entirely in the 1890's. More important, he focuses on the human elements and the foibles of the lead characters, which carry the tale into the realm of comedy. He also takes full advantage of the range of his performers to achieve this end. Dick Powell displays a brash but tough side, lighter than the rough image he first assumed in 1944 with Murder My Sweet, but heavier and more substantial than the light leading man persona in which he specialized in the 1930's -- he's convincing as an ambitious young reporter, but equally believable at the end, as he tries to take advantage of the forces at work around him, which seemingly have doomed him, trying to secure a future for his beloved, and later fiercely fighting with a thug on a New York street, knowing that he can't die until he gets to the hotel where tomorrow's newspaper says he will die. And Linda Darnell is not only the most delectable looking brunette actress of her era (it's easy to see the allure of her character's phony mystic act, as she looks irresistable in one of her "trances"); in Clair's hands, she also displays a beguilingly innocent, wholesome, lighthearted allure, rather akin to her 20th Century-Fox stablemate Betty Grable -- the scene in which she and Powell meet and change clothes in his room is one of the most charmingly, innocently sexy pieces of film of her whole career. The rest of the cast evokes the gilded age of the 1890's in all of its rough-hewn charm, with Edgar Kennedy especially funny as a blustery police inspector and Jack Oakie, in one of his most robust performances, as well-meaning man caught between his genuine desire to protect his niece and his greed. The film represents an extraordinary balancing act between comedy and drama, romance and fantasy, briskly paced in all of the right places and reflective and myaterious where it needs to be. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
Rene Hubert - Costume Designer, René Clair - Director, Fred Pressburger - Editor, Robert Stolz - Composer (Music Score), Robert Stolz - Musical Direction/Supervision, Erno Metzner - Production Designer, Louis Clyde Stoumen - Cinematographer, Archie J. Stout - Cinematographer, Eugen Schüfftan - Cinematographer, Arnold Pressburger - Producer, Jack Whitney - Sound/Sound Designer, René Clair - Screenwriter, Dudley Nichols - Screenwriter, Howard Snyder - Screenwriter, Hugh Wedlock, Jr. - Screenwriter, Helene Fraenkel - Screenwriter, Lord Dunsany - Short Story Author
Powell plays a reporter who is given, by a ghostly deceased newspaper man, a newspaper that has tomorrow's news. He uses the paper to write stories and get the "scoop" on other newspaper men. In addition, he uses the power to bet on horses he know will win and gains considerable wealth. He and new girlfriend Sylvia enjoy the power for a while until the paper predicts the reporter's death.
Entr'acte (1924) •Paris qui dort (1924, a/k/a The Crazy Ray) •La Tour (1928) •Forever and a Day (1943, segment "1897") •La Française et l'amour (1960, segment "Le Mariage") •Les Quatre vérités (1962, segment "Les Deux Pigeons")
