I re-watched There’s Always Tomorrow again last night and was left with a renewed appreciation:
The mise-en-scene is as expressive as you’d expect, the themes an inverse of the typical representation of the family in films of the time. Here family life is lit as a noir, with all the trauma, blockages, frustrated desires evoked by the lighting (the cinematography is by the great Russell Metty)>
The house is a prison
Screens, mesh, darkness, depth. Longing in the depths, out of reach, but framed for us.
Family gets in the way:
Children are frightful:
..and there are so many barriers to the fulfilment of one’s hopes even the light cries:
William Reynolds basically plays the same role he will do later in All That Heaven Allows: the stuffy, priggish, selfish, son who can’t conceive of a parent having an interest other than their children and makes sure to block it.
It was wonderful.
José Arroyo
