Esperança

I didn't expect much since Charles Farrell and Marian Nixon are the stars but this is a fine little domestic drama (from a Broadway play) about two Depression-Era young people trying to save enough money to get married. The film is directed by Frank Borzage.

The opening scenes take place in the newly complete Empire State Building as the couple looks out over the night-lit city, their future seeming to be as limitless as the view.

Then we get back to their Street Scene tenement neighborhood where the realities of life close in on them and stifle their future. Farrell lives with a grasping widowed mother (Josephine Hull) while Nixon lives were her unhappy parents (William Collier, Minna Gombell).

Gombell is planning to run off with another man; Collier is a failed salesman recovering from a heart attack. The young couple keeps squeezing nickels and dimes into their marriage account but something always comes up to rob them of their savings. Will they ever marry? Farrell (not a fave) is actually good here as the serious young man trying to get ahead; Nixon (substituting for Janet Gaynor) is terrific as the sweet girl trying to keep everyone happy. Collier is excellent as the loving failure of a dad. Gombell and Hull play 2 of the most unsympathetic mothers you'll ever see. Gombell feels she's been robbed of her youth; Hull is a smothering mother who can't let go of her son.

Borzage keeps the film moving and does a good job with the material. Hull is especially interesting here, long before her movie successes in Arsenic and Old Lace and Harvey. She's the only member of the Broadway cast to make it to the film.

"Back Street" brought down to roaches, clinging 'n swinging moms and basement cold water flats! Depression Dirge Tune: "All the world will smile again. Dialogue punctuated by the "Aw! Gees! and "Swells" vocabulary of that inchoate time. Grace notes: Clinging mom's Wedding Gift: a bra wafted aloft. Silver plated wedding gift (for 4) from co-workers. Nostalgic Notes: Doctor conveniently across tenement street. No Radio! No fans!No fridge! Surprises: Anti-smoking message and barely chaste lovers. Ending: Erotic Niagara Falls. Better than North by Northwest but in the tradition of "Our Daily Bread", the"Crowd" and "Beggars of Life".

This weeper is well directed, as you would expect with Frank Borzage directing. No one had a surer touch at directing a sentimental romantic drama than Borzage, and with James Wong Howe as the director of photography, you have some effective, beautiful shots. Together they know how to produce shots of depth and beauty that illuminate the story and create a three dimensional world, whether it's a deep-focus shot of the wedding rehearsal where you can see the neighbors hanging over the fence watching, or a shot of Marian Nixon and William Collier seated together, with only one in focus, under a scrim of light.

But this movie, while good, misses being great because of the lack of great performances at its heart. Charles Farrell was a good performer, but his stardom was due to being teamed with Janey Gaynor in their breakout hits, and Marian Nixon, while competent, is clearly a stand-in for Miss Gaynor. The best performance in the entire movie is William Collier Sr., who is great, reminding me of a pudgy, beaten-down Harry Carey.

Definitely worth your time if not worth seeing more than once.

Excellent early talking picture with loads of "pre-code" racy language and situations, scandalous behavior, and a genuinely touching romance between Charles Farrell and Marian Nixon. Don't be fooled into thinking this is just another light romance. The terrific dialog is often surprisingly frank, especially when Minna Gombell -- in the performance of her life -- tells her daughter things no child should hear from a parent. Even 75 years later, that scene is genuinely shocking. All the parts are well acted, but a particular standout is Josephine Hull; her scenes with William Collier Sr. are absolutely hilarious. Direction by Frank Borzage is, as usual, nearly flawless. This film really should be much better known.

This is an intimate portrayal of ordinary people during the Depression struggling against lack of money, wayward and selfish parents, inability to get married (waiting for four years to have enough money), and many vicissitudes of everyday life which are often extremely harrowing. The characters are all 'extraordinarily ordinary', meaning that there is nothing at all remarkable about any of them, none is particularly bright, none has much ambition, and the heroine's one aim in life is to get married to her totally uninteresting boyfriend, who never takes his hat off when he is engaging in intimate conversations with her and has nothing to recommend him, not even a bit of charm. Marian Nixon is a frail, squeaky-voiced but delightfully innocent actress who plays the heroine. She has eyes too wide apart, but she loves her man, loves her man, loves her man. It is very touching because she really means it. Her performance is entirely convincing. Her mother, played by Minna Gombell, is embittered, hard, selfish, and disloyal, but Marian is such a goodie goodie she never even notices. William Collier Senior is an excellent father for Marian, gentle, loving, but hopeless because he has lost all initiative. This is not a film to see to cheer oneself up, but it is an honest and sensitive social drama which is well made and of great interest as a period piece. It is remarkably lacking in any trace of affectation, and being pre-code, it is unrestrained by the ludicrous restrictions soon to be placed on dialogue and action in Hollywood. The title 'after tomorrow' refers to the fact that everything is being deferred to tomorrow because of poverty, and 'after tomorrow' is the dream when it all might have happened. The script has a lot of wit. The direction is good. Charles Farrell plays the boyfriend, and he is really so uninteresting in every respect, looks, character, aspirations, that how anyone could be in love with him is a mystery. So maybe this is a new kind of mystery film: how people who are so ordinary that making a film about them seems an impossibility nevertheless make us want to watch them enacting their difficult lives. Probably the best performance in the film is by Josephine Hull, whose well-rounded portrayal of an infinitely exasperating and despicably selfish and self-indulgent mother of the boyfriend is a triumph of the dramatic art. The rapid oscillations in her moods, her alternating endearments and curses, her rudderless cascade of self obsession, are portrayed with the finesse of a lace maker.