Veillée d'amour

While not as big and splashy as their pairing in "Love Affair" released the same year, Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer star in what is rather a "small" film. "When Tomorrow Comes" is a tale of unrequited love between two people who because of the man being bound to a mentally ill wife can never be together. Irene Dunne convincingly plays an underemployed ordinary working gal, one who aspires to be a singer but who is stuck toiling the days away as a waitress. Her character bonds with Boyer's character by disobeying her restaurant's "no substitutions" rule and fulfilling his request for French apple pie. This scene is endearing as she dares to simply place a piece of cheese on top of a slice of hot apple pie and cover the pie until the cheese melts--LOL, "it ain't nothing' but a thing" as Dunne goes the extra step to please the customer. From then on the two are friends and go off together to explore Manhattan and go sailing together. Their would be love affair is derailed by nothing less than a hurricane and the reappearance of Boyer's wife, played here by Barbara O'Neill. O'Neill steals the show as she portrays a woman who is mentally unbalanced, but not for the reason everyone suspects. While her illness is attributed to the death of her infant son, we soon discover that she is using this as an excuse to keep Boyer bound to her. In the scene where Dunne confronts her and pleads for her to release Boyer, we are chilled by O'Neill's psychopathic threat to do harm to Boyer should he leave her for Dunne. O'Neill is scary as hell and Dunne understands as the audience does that she is promising to do Boyer harm not merely threatening to. Because of this, Dunne knows that Boyer can never be hers and for this reason she must bid him farewell forever. The final scene where they part ways as she exits from the restaurant where they are having their last supper together is a tearjerker. No matter how many times she plays the poignant heroine who is called on to do the right thing, Dunne nails it. Her pain is our pain. Boyer's pain in losing her is also our own. Their love is lost and the pain is unbearable.

This is not one of Stahl's best works.The movie lacks a center of gravity. Melodrama interferes with social topics(unions,strikes,meetings)and even a deluge,complete with a night in a temple.Besides,the Madeleine character appears too late and is hardly credible.She suffers from mental illness since she lost her child.And the unfortunate heroine tells her so:"you win because you're helpless". Charles Boyer plays the usual Latin lover,and Irene Dunne,the impossible love ,as she did in Fannie Hurst's famous tear-jerker. The ending is ambiguous:in his 1957 remake,the by now usual Sirk remake has ,it seems -I haven't seen it yet- ,a more definitive conclusion. All in all,watchable,because of the cast ,but ,not a great Stahl.

NB:I saw Sirk's remake yesterday (7/12/09).Stick with Stahl.

I love Dunne and Boyer and think they are a good match. However, I am constantly amazed at how long Irene Dunne was able to get away with 20-something roles. She is 41 here, and looks it. She is playing a waitress with a roommate who is about to strike for better pay. Her character at most would be 25. Yet producers continued to give Dunne these types of roles even after this movie. I don't really get it. When Lana Turner was in her early 40s, she was playing mothers of teenagers in "Imitation of Life" and "Portrait in Black" and Mary Astor had moved to these roles by the time she was 38. I don't understand why they weren't moving Dunne to more motherly roles by this time; she certainly does not look or act like an ingenue.

Love Affair proved so popular a film that Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne were reteamed in When Tomorrow Comes at Universal Pictures.

Dunne who is usually chic and stylish plays a cafe waitress who gets to wait on Charles Boyer. No one there including Dunne realizes he's a world famous concert pianist.

Dunne goes on strike as the waitresses get organized. Boyer courts her when she's not on the picket line. They have a nice romantic interlude on Long Island when a hurricane hits.

Boyer is keeping secrets from her like the fact he's already married to Barbara O'Neil who has some mental issues.

There's a choice to be made by both of them that's obvious. What they do is for you to watch the film for.

Both keep up the same romantic standard set in Love Affair. When Tomorrow Comes won an Oscar for Sound Recording. Fans of the stars will approve

This is a heart-rending story covered up in a romantic comedy of many wonderful and surprising turnings, and it is impossible to guess at the sad conclusion of this very entertaining and stimulating journey. It's a typical Irene Dunne film, it's like a twin shadow of "Love Affair" of the same year, but although this film is more hearty and gleeful in its romantic ways, it is more tragic than "Love Affair", which puts on a more sinister fateful aspect but nevertheless ends better. Here you are faced with a truly hopeless situation with no end to its abysmal tragedy, which no one can do anything about, and still Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne settle to make the best of it and hope for tomorrow anyway, and maybe, after all, it will come...