From This Day Forward (1946)
Directed by John Berry

Film Review

"Have faith in the future" is the comforting message of From This Day Forward, an engaging but pretty half-hearted attempt to combine social realism (of the kind that was beginning to surface in European cinema at the time) with conventional Hollywood melodrama.  Released in the aftermath of WWII, when the American public needed reassurance that, to coin a phrase, things could only get better, the film was certainly well-timed, but its reluctance to depart too far from the cosy melodrama form that American audiences loved prevented it from having anything like the impact it deserved.  Screenwriter Hugo Butler and director John Berry were both left-leaning in their politics and would end up on the Hollywood blacklist after being denounced to the HUAC during the McCarthyist anti-communist purge of the late 1940s. 

Despite Butler and Berry's political orientation, and some screenwriting support from the great playwright Clifford Odets, From This Day Forward feels like socialist propaganda that has had all the stuffing kicked out of it.  Joan Fontaine and Mark Stevens make an attractive screen couple but they struggle to be convincing as an ordinary working class couple trying to survive on the breadline.  The film may not live up to expectations, but, as melodrama, it hits all the right buttons and has just the right level of heart-warming schmaltz.  Directed and photographed with flair, it reveals in Berry a promising new film director with both an eye for detail and a sensitive heart.  Sadly, thanks to the Hollywood blacklist, Berry would have to work hard to fulfil his potential in another country - France.

Film Synopsis

On his return to the United States after active service in WWII, Bill Cummings struggles to find work to support himself and his young wife Susan.  As he languishes in the Employment Service, he casts his mind back to the happy time before the war when he first met Susan.  Life was tough then too, but both had jobs.  Susan worked in a bookshop, he earned a decent crust as a lathe operator.  But when Bill lost his job during the Great Depression, not long after marrying Susan, things soon began to get difficult.  Unemployed, Bill gratefully accepted an offer from Susan's employer to provide illustrations for his book.  But when the book was deemed offensive, he found himself in court, charged with peddling pornography.  Luckily, WWII came to Bill's aid...