Hasta el fin del tiempo

Though Till The End Of Time boasted a hit song which filled the radio airwaves for months after the film was released, seen today it looks a whole lot like a dress rehearsal for The Best Years Of Our Lives. Not that it is a bad film, but Sam Goldwyn did so much better with a very similar plot involving three returning war veterans.

In this case we're talking Marines, veterans of the Pacific Theater who have just come home and are trying to readjust to civilian life. At least Guy Madison is all in one piece. He meets up with attractive war widow Dorothy McGuire who's having a much harder time. Her late husband was a flier, the glamor job of the service and just about anyone else doesn't measure up. But Madison has one advantage, he's alive and McGuire is not getting any younger.

Till The End Of Time was a followup film for Robert Mitchum who had just had his breakthrough role in The Story Of GI Joe. He plays Madison's best friend, the cowboy of Kwajalein, who talks about getting enough money together for a chicken ranch in New Mexico, but just can't quite get around to ending the partying from being discharged. Mitchum got the most notice from this film and this cemented his number one status at RKO for years.

Like The Best Years Of Our Lives this film dealt with three veterans and the third is Bill Williams, later television's Kit Carson, who is a double amputee. Not much call for prize fighters which he was before the war with no legs. Selena Royle is particularly touching in her role as Williams's mother.

The acclaim this film got was drowned out by the Goldwyn masterpiece which ironically enough was also released by RKO. But besides Mitchum's performance, the title theme from this picture was a big record hit in 1946. Adapted from Chopin's Polonaise by Ted Mossman and Buddy Kaye, Till The End Of Time gave Perry Como one of his earliest gold records just as he was breaking out as a singer. Doris Day also had a big seller with the Les Brown band.

A lot of the plot elements from The Best Years Of Our Lives are found in this film. Served up nicely, but not quite the same flavor, still tasty though.

The year after World War II ended brought the first dramas to look at the plight of returning veterans trying to readjust to civilian norms. The Best Years of Our Lives was the big hit that year, but there were others, too. The title song in Till The End of Time, which was adapted from a Chopin polonaise, snakes through the movie wearing many skins, from saraband to Swing, constituting one of the more effective leitmotifs of 40s-movie scores. The story centers on Guy Madison, returning from the Pacific to his Los Angeles family. His parents expect the boy who left, not the man (physically, at least) who came back; they recoil when he wants to share his experiences in battle. So he starts to rebel against their sheltered and complacent life but has little idea of what to do with his own.

His love life is riven as well. One the one side there's the brash bobby-soxer next door, symbolizing what he used to be; on the other is weary war-widow Dorothy McGuire (among her most affecting roles), another survivor of the horrors of combat.

It's tempting to assume that Madison landed this meaty role (he's constantly on screen) solely because of his looks -- extraordinary, even by Hollywood standards. But he delivers a natural, if a bit bashful, performance. Only when buddy Robert Mitchum resurfaces halfway through the movie does he suffer by comparison. As a black sheep with a steel plate in his skull, Mitchum strikes the sparks that would ignite his long stardom; Madison, while pleasant and competent, comes up with nothing new and starts to grow monotonous (his career took him to TV westerns and European cheapies).

Director Edward Dmytryk (Murder, My Sweet; Back to Bataan) tones down for this leisurely character study, which remains absorbing and at times close to moving. He missteps once, very near the end, when a blast at bigotry comes flying out of left field, and he probably had to settle for the upbeat ending the studio wanted. But it was left to film noir, which dealt with similar issues obliquely (Blue Dahlia, Act of Violence, Dmytryk's own Crossfire) that probed them more profoundly.

Dorothy McGuire's performance (as Pat Ruscomb, war widow) is exceptionally good in this film. She is so convincing that viewers need focus on the effects of World War II on the war widows as much as the effects on returning servicemen. Despite her plight, she is the character that holds the film together when all else is chaos. One can only wonder how many women were left in like situations after the war. Where "The Best Years of Our Lives" adequately portrays the problems of readjustments of soldiers to civilian life, this film gives us a look at the sinister effect on those who remained on the home front. The scars on women, families, and homes do extend "till the end of time."

I picked this up for $5 at a sale just because it had Robert Mitchum's name on the credits. Mitchum's role is secondary but I found I enjoyed the movie rather more than I thought I would.

I understand it was released the same year as THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES and was rather over shadowed by that more expensive production.

The theme is dated, servicemen adjusting to civilian life after WW2, it is basically a soap opera but it very well handled by director Edward Dmytryk. Chopin's music is cleverly interwoven throughout, as background music, as a popular song with lyrics added heard over the radio and even jazzed up in a barroom sequence.

Performances are good. Guy Madison is no great shakes as an actor but he looks the part, give an honest performance and doesn't bump into the furniture. Dorothy Mcguire has always been a favorite of mine. Usually she played dowdy housewives but she had a neat figure and to me she had a down to earth sex appeal.

Well worth seeing.

I would make the case that Guy Madison may be the best-looking young man to ever star in a feature film, and this is his best one. There are moments where his totally unselfconscious looks are just jaw-dropping. His acting, on the other hand, can be described charitably as "natural"; but I wasn't expecting Lawrence Olivier. Guy was an early find of legendary Hollywood agent Henry Willson, who would later "discover" a tall young man whom he renamed Rock Hudson.