There's Always Tomorrow: The Masters of Cinema Series

Twelve years after their stunning collaboration on Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity, Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray team up again in a very different sort of film.  MacMurray plays Cliff Groves, the head of a toy manufacturing company who has been married for twenty years to his loving and dutiful wife, Marion and lives in their beautiful home with their three children, Vinnie, Ellen and Frankie.  Feeling neglected and unloved by his family, Cliff continues to try his hardest and buys tickets for Marion to the theatre on her birthday.  She puts the children before herself and him and takes Frankie to a ballet rehearsal instead.  Vinnie and Ellen are both occupied and even the maid has plans so Cliff resigns himself to a lonely night in.
 
Whilst he's unenthusiastically eating his dinner, a knock on the door reveals that former colleague Norma Miller is in town on business, having left his toy factor to become a successful fashion designer in New York.  She is a divorcée and now goes by Norma Vale and Cliff asks if she wouldn't mind going to the theatre with him.  During the interval, Norma confesses that she has already seen the show but would love to go back to the factory and see what he's done with the place and what toys are in development.
 

Cliff and Norma immediately reignite their old friendship and she's invited round for dinner as she has expresses a desire to meet his wife and family.  Meanwhile, Cliff has planned a weekend getaway for him and Marion at Palm Valley where he will meet Mr. Andrews, the owner of one of the largest department stores in the country and a prospective client.  Unfortunately, Frankie twists her ankle and Marion decides to stay home, once again putting the children first.  Marion insists that Cliff goes anyway and have a relaxing weekend taking in some sun but when he arrives, he is surprised to find that Norma has booked in for a short stay and they continue to reminisce about the good old days.
 
On a double date, Vinnie and Ellen travel to Palm Valley to meet with their father and swim and relax with their partners but are surprised that Mr. Andrews is not there and hasn't checked in as, unbeknownst to them, he has cancelled the meeting and rescheduled for the week after.  Finding their father laughing and having fun with Norma, Vinnie suspects they are having an affair.
 
Vinnie behaviour and attitude towards Norma degenerates and, with his family increasingly distant, Cliff begins to fall in love with Norma.
 
Douglas Sirk built up an incredibly impressive oeuvre during his career and There's Always Tomorrow was made in between two of his finest and acclaimed works, All That Heaven Allows and Written on the Wind.  This certainly is the lesser of the three films with a rather soap opera feel to the screenplay.  It feels like it should be a scathing satire of the nuclear family and the place of the man in society but comes across like an over melodramatic and rather flimsy plotted work.
 
As with Sirk's other work, you can say what you like about the acting or writing but there is no dispute that he is a master of mise-en-scène who can wring the most out of set decoration and lighting to create tension almost out of nothing.  MacMurray and Stanwyck are certainly older than when they first met on screen with such sexual chemistry and age has withered them although Stanwyck puts in a fine performance with incredible poise and stature.  The supporting cast, led by Joan Bennett as Marion, are very good and suitably innocent or irritating depending on what the role calls for.
 

The Disc

 
Extra Features
Aside from the trailer and typically hefty booklet, the main feature is Days with Sirk, a French documentary from 2008 featuring a great deal of footage of Sirk from 1982.  Made by two cinephiles, including one Sirk expert, this is a fascinating hour long piece with revealing footage and insights from the two men.  Everything in French is subtitled and even some of the English clips of Sirk's films have French subtitles as this was made for a domestic audience.
 
There is also the original dialogue and continuity script that can be accessed through a computer as a PDF file so scholars and serious fans have even more reading material.
 
The Picture
Presented in the OAR of 1.85:1, this looks very good and the fantastic cinematography by renowned director of photography Russell Metty is unsurprisingly noir tinged (Metty is perhaps most well known for photographing Touch of Evil).  The contrast levels are suitably dark and showcase the wonderful monochrome photography.
 
The Sound
The mono soundtrack is extremely clear and the suitably over the top score - this is melodrama after all - toys with the emotions and is just on the right side of saccharine and exploitative.
 
Final Thoughts
Douglas Sirk was a great director whose work I have always appreciated rather than enjoyed and this is another film that I watched marvelling at the technical brilliance of the director and crew whilst feeling thoroughly uninvolved and far from engaged with the emotional turmoil onscreen.  Sirk fans will no doubt welcome this release and the Masters of Cinema have lived up to their reputation of producing superb AV packages, interesting booklets and forgotten films by great directors.