Et la vie recommence

Boasting a cast of 78 movie stars, performers from every corner banded together for the troops in Forever and a Day, another "variety show" movie that was popular during WWII. Join Dame May Whitty, Edmund Gwenn, Arthur Treacher, Victor McLaglen, Herbert Marshall, C. Aubrey Smith, Buster Keaton, Gene Lockhart, Reginald Owen, Halliwell Hobbs, Charles Laughton, Elsa Lanchester, Nigel Bruce, Una O'Connor, Richard Hayden, Brian Aherne, Claude Rains, Ray Milland, Edward Everett Horton, Patric Knowles, June Duprez, Cecil Kellaway Ida Lupino, Eric Blore, Merle Oberon, Queenie Leopard, Jessie Matthews, Gladys Cooper, Robert Cummings, Donald Crisp as they act out a script contributed to by 22 writers, and directed and produced by seven skilled men.

In one of his earlier films, Kent Smith stars as a young man interested in the history of an old British house. Told through vignettes, the house's owners and ancestors are explained. This has an entirely different feel than the usual "variety show" movies from the time period. There isn't song after dance after skit; instead, it's dramatic British scene after mildly comical British scene after neutral British scene. Unless you can keep up with the different accents and class distinctions and tongue-in-cheek about modern conveniences like bathtubs and motor cars, you probably won't like this one. It is fun to see Charles Laughton playing a butler and Brian Aherne trying out for Cary Grant's part in None But the Lonely Heart, though.

"Forever and a Day" is a wonderful human-interest story with a number of flashbacks that give a slice of English History in London from 1804 to 1941. The setting for this is during the German bombing of England early in World War II. It takes place in the basement bomb shelter of an historic house. The plot centers around the house, with the various members of two families that had intertwined, married and lived there. It began with the Admiral Eustace Trimble who built the house for his home in the country - a comfortable distance from the town of London. It ends with a descendant and current occupant, Lesley Trimble, offering to buy it from an unknown American distant relative, Gates Trimble Pomfret. He had come to England on business for his father's company, and as a last stop before his return to America, he was to sell the old Trimble house.

When the nightly German bombing raids throw the two together with many others from the neighborhood in the basement, Lesley tells Gates the story of the house and the five generations that lived there. With the roles of others in the bomb shelter, the flashbacks involve more than 100 actors, of which three dozen have significant roles. Many of these are prominent actors of the day - mostly British.

The idea for the movie came from Cedric Hardwicke, and it was based on an unpublished novel by British producer, director and writer, Robert Stevenson. It was intended as a tribute to the English people on the Homefront, during the first years of the war. It was to be a picture by British actors, writers and directors, for the British people. And, all of the cast were to donate their time for the effort without pay. Due to union restrictions, they all had to receive a minimum daily amount, but most turned it over for war relief. RKO Radio Pictures took the project on.

The film was originally planned to be released around mid-1941, but it wasn't finished until early 1943. A number of delays occurred during production, often times around schedules of actors who were working on other movies at the time. The movie was shot in six segments that covered 10 time periods. Even with that, some English actors intended for the film were never able to take part. Among those most prominent at the time who had to have replacements for intended roles were Greer Garson, Cary Grant and Ronald Colman. Some other prominent British actors who weren't in the film are Michael Wilding, Richard Attenborough, Alec Guinness, Laurence Olivier, John Mills, David Niven and Leslie Howard. These were all in military service or tied to war-related efforts at the time. Niven was on the ground with the Army, and Howard would die on June 1 when the commercial plane he was a passenger in was shot down by German fighters over the Bay of Biscay off the Atlantic Coast of France.

Of the 106 parts filmed for the movie, five were in scenes that wound up on the cutting room floor. Academy Award winner Charles Coburn was one of those who didn't make it in the final film. But six other major award-winning actors had very good parts, including Ray Milland, Edmund Gwenn, Victor McLaglen, Donald Crisp, Charles Laughton and Elsa Lanchester. Of the more than 100 actors with parts, 88 were from the U.K. - 73 from England, six from Ireland, thee each from Scotland and South Africa, two from Australia and one from New Zealand. The British made up 85% of the cast. The biggest rest of the cast came from the USA, with 14. Four other countries each had one actor in the picture - Argentina, France, Italy and Sweden.

The film also boasted about having 21 different writers and seven directors, including Stevenson. While the movie was released in England and the U.S. in early 1943, it was some time after the war that most other European countries were able to see the film. It did show in neutral Sweden yet that year - opening in late September; and in March 1944 it was shown in Portugal. But it wasn't shown in Italy until late August 1945, in France until late 1947, and in Belgium until early 1953. Interestingly, it was finally shown in German theaters in 1993.

All of the cast are very good for their parts. Since there are so many, it would be short shrift to name any more than the award winner for the film's lure. This is an interesting and endearing sort of film. It is a quaint look at modern English history (19th century to mid-20th). And, it is a fine picture of the Englanders who bore up under war-time horrors that few civilian populations have had to bear in war times. It was a fine morale booster at the time, not only to the British. And it remains a fine testimonial to those people who "kept the home fires burning" while fighting to extinguish the fires from the German bombings.

"Forever and a Day" is a most unusual film project. In order to bolster the war effort, a huge group of Hollywood stars* agreed to work on this project without pay. The same for the 19 writers and seven directors involved...they worked without pay and it was to help the war effort. It truly is an impressive effort and although it was made by RKO Studio, it had the cooperation of the other Hollywood studios in loaning folks to the project.

Kent Smith plays an American who has come to London during the Blitz in order to sell a home his family has owned the place for generations. However, he comes off as a bit of a smug jerk and so the lady living there, a distant relation, tells him all about the history of the home and its occupants.

This film is intended to show the folks in the States just how swell our British allies are as well as the long sense of history about the country. This is shown through vignettes showing sacrifice and patriotism...starting with the Battle of Trefalger to WWII.

Overall, this is a surprisingly well made film. I say surprisingly because sometimes when you assemble many directors, the result is a total mess (such as "Casino Royale" from 1967, which had six credited directors). This one, however, is coherent and enjoyable...and very well made.

*Most of the stars in the film are supporting actors and actresses. However, a few A-list actors such as Ray Milland, Charles Laughton, Merle Oberon and Herbert Marshall appear in the movie. Additionally, a few of the actors are a bit of a surprise, such as Buster Keaton! Many, if not most, of the actors are Brits living and working in Hollywood.

This was one unusual project especially for a relatively minor major studio like RKO. In Forever And A Day they assembled a whole bunch of players from the Hollywood British colony, imported a couple like Anna Neagle and Jessie Matthews who did their work across the pond and put them all in one film that was directed by a half dozen directors or so. That many hands in the creation usually is a recipe for disaster. Usually that spells incoherent, but in the case of Forever And A Day it's just ponderous.

Kent Smith and Ruth Warrick meet during the blitz, she owns a house he'd like to buy. It turns out he's distantly related to Warrick. The house was built by their common ancestor C. Aubrey Smith who was a retired admiral during the Napoleonic Wars. He built the place in an area that was rural then, London hadn't spread out that far. Warrick then starts telling the story, warts and all, of the house and the generations who lived there.

I'm amazed the film was as good as it was. Still the story is slow moving and definitely parts are better than the whole. The only villain in the piece is really Claude Rains who was an ancestor, but a conniving schemer who had his ward stolen from him by Ray Milland as he was about to make a profitable match for her. A lot of women really were chattel in 1804. Rains is never bad in anything.

Charles Laughton had a small role as a butler to one of the generations that lived in the house. Watch Laughton in this tiny role, it's one of the best examples of a consummate actor making something out of a nothing role.

Forever And A Day is interesting, but that's the best I can say for it. It was good wartime propaganda, it's not the kind of film to ever be remade. If it is, hopefully with one good director and one creative vision.

This is like a cavalcade travelling through history, commencing in Napoleonic times and ending in the Blitz. There are many poignant moments on the way, and the cast contains almost all the best names of the period. Among the most memorable ones are Charles Laughton as a drinking butler, Claude Rains as the only miserable tenant of the house ever, while the real moment of truth is in 1917 when the Americans enter the war. There is a very sensitive scene between Gladys Cooper and Merle Oberon that will stick on your mind for a long time, and Roland Young as the husband with Robert Coote as the blind veteran add to the impression of this scene. The second world war, which provides the beginning and end of the film, comes a little beside the point, since the main issue is the life that all the residents of the two families alternating in peopling the house, bestowed on the house and created a continuity, that not even the second world war could destroy. The message of the film is about continuity, how nothing can change what has been, which will go on forever even if only as memories, which provides quite some food for thought and afterthought. It's a very different film resembling almost none other, except in some ways Noel Coward's "Cavalcade" of 1931, which was something similar, ending in the first world war. This is in the same style and equally touching and profoundly human, which makes it a joy to behold and to remember.