Rent There's Always Tomorrow (1956)

Domestic Drama. - There's Always Tomorrow review by Steve

This stands apart from other Sirk melodramas for Universal in the fifties most obviously because it is in black and white, but also as it focuses on a male character. But it satirises the materialism of the American suburban middle class just as succinctly.

 Fred MacMurray is a middle aged, middle class husband and father of a certain age who begins to feel stifled. He has become the financial support system to three awful kids and an indifferent wife (Joan Bennett). Temptation arrives with a visit from an old colleague (Barbara Stanwyck) who has been carrying a flame for him over many years.

 This is Fred macMurray's best performance. He's not cast against type as he was successfully by Billy Wilder, but he feels like the inevitable culmination of the many sitcom dads he played over the years, but here, grotesquely trapped. The film identifies him quite hideously with the sci-fi robot his toy business is rolling out to the American market.

 There's Always Tomorrow is a slender, compact film that focuses minutely on the condition of its distressed hero. It feels like a short story. Sirk tells us that the conventions of American society mass produce depressed, maladjusted human beings. Watching MacMurray being pinned by degrees to a profound emotional pain purely through getting everything that he ever wanted, is really quite distressing.