IT HAPPENED TO-MORROW

New Zealand Listener, Volume 11, Issue 285, 8 December 1944, Page 22

IT HAPPENED TO-MORROW

| (Réné Clair-United Artists.)

HEN I saw this film on its opening night in Wellington, the theatre was a good deal more than half

empty, and from all accounts the whole season was a bad one. The theatre-manager probably thinks he knows the whole reason why. I doubt if he does, As a piece of friendly advice to him and others like him, I would, suggest that the next time he has a film that is made by Réné Clair, he should tell the public. In all the newspaper advertising in Wellington for It Happened To-morrow, the name of Réné Clair was mentioned only twice and then presumably only because of the quite accidental circumstance that the name was part of a display advertisement matrix, — Réné Clair’s name might have meant nothing to most of the Dick PowellJack Oakie fans who did go to see the picture but I am pretty sure it would have meant a good deal to a number of people who didn’t. For even the worst Réné Clair production is streets ahead of the average movie in imagination and ‘polish, and It Happened To-morrow is very far indeed from being his worst. It is, in fact, very nearly the best piece of work this famous French director has done since he went to Hollywood; not quite as uproariously funny and certainly not as spectacular as 1 Married a Witch, but with the same element of ingenious fantasy, the same touch of the supernatural, and just as much spontaneous wit. Suppose, says Clair (borrowing the idea from Lord Dunsany) that a man, a newspaper reporter, could read to-to-morrow evening’s newspaper to-day, could know for a certainty what horses were going to win races that had not yet been run, what crimes were going to be committed, and so on? And suppose that, after enjoying for three days this remarkable gift of clairvoyance, he read in the headlines of the next day’s paper the news of his own death in a shooting affray? Would he still feel he was sitting on top of the world? That is the situation in which Dick Powell finds himself in this story, thanks to the intervention of a queer old chap with unorthodox theories about time who, it turns out later, has been dead for three days and is therefore in a privileged position when it comes to looking into the future. It is the kind of whimsical, irresponsible, slightly creepy situation that suits Clair’s talents down to the ground, and the setting (in the America of the ‘nineties) seems to suit them too. For the most part the film is delightfully "in period": the days of hansom cabs, gas lamps, and musichalls provide an excellent background for caricature and high-spirited fun. That gaggle of gossips in night-caps at the foot of the stairs; that chase over the roof-tops; some of the funny faces in the crowd at the race-track-at moments like these Réné Clair, is signing his name to the picture. There are, however, other moments when the comedy is, by comparison,

laboured; when something happens to block the spontaneous flow. At such times it becomes plain that Clair is still not quite at ease in the Hollywood environment; he continues to be embarrassed by the Star System and by the conventions of the American cinema. But he is settling down, and although we are not likely, while he remains under the roofs of Hollywood, to see a film comparable with Sous Les Toits de Paris, we can now confidently expect a good second best. But he does need the co-operation of audiences-and, I might add, of theatre-managers and publicity-writers to let them know what to expect,