Alfred, Lord Tennyson, is remembered by most people who like movies because he wrote (as George Orwell once said) the most stirring poem about warfare concerning a regiment of cavalry that charged the wrong guns. If you see Errol Flynn's THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE, Lord Tennyson's lines appear at the conclusion of that film. However, he wrote far more than that. On the "Rumpole of the Bailey" episodes, Horace Rumpole (Leo McKern) would frequently recite Tennyson - he did a marvelous recitation of the magnificent conclusion of Tennyson's "Ulysses" in one episode. Others have quoted him. Angela Landsbury recites lines from "The Lady of Shalott" in THE MIRROR CRACKED. I might add that the title of the classiest of British black comedies, KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS, is from Tennyson.
One of Tennyson's poems was "Enoch Arden", which details how a young man goes to sea from his village, leaving behind his girlfriend and family, is believed to have died at sea, and returns twenty years later, physically changed but interested in seeing if he can pick up where he left off. He finds it impossible - and decides to die under his assumed name rather than reveal to his loved ones his real identity.
This plot has been frequently used in films, normally for comic purposes (why, if the poem is tragic, this happened I cannot fathom). Cary Grant and Irene Dunne appeared in MY FAVORITE WIFE back in 1941, with Dunne reappearing (with Randolph Scott) after having been declared legally dead following a shipwreck. Marilyn Monroe's final film, SOMETHING'S GOT TO GIVE, was a remake of MY FAVORITE WIFE. Doris Day also did a similar film. To the best of my knowledge, TOMORROW IS FOREVER is the only film based on this plot line that treats it tragically as it should be.
As such it is not as successful a movie as MY FAVORITE WIFE was. To begin with, Grant and Dunne had screen chemistry (which one can tell by their frequent pairing together, in WIFE, THE AWFUL TRUTH, and PENNY SERENADE). One could readily believe Cary and Irene could be a real item. That is not the case in TOMORROW IS FOREVER. Powerful performers that Orson Welles and Claudette Colbert are, one cannot quite accept them as a couple. In the film there is an early sequence when we see the young Welles going off to World War I in his dough-boy uniform. This is barely acceptable, because Welles is (in fact) ten years of so younger than Colbert. The age difference is too much to accept and spoils receiving them as a genuine couple. This is not totally damaging to the picture, as the other scenes they have together Welles is older and physically changed (although Colbert keeps wondering if Welles is the young man she married, bore a son of, and has mourned since 1917). Since they don't have to relate intimately again, one can try to forget this failure in casting. But it does make one have to work overtime to accept the rest of the plot.
It does not help, by the way, that a few years before Colbert made a splendid little movie with John Payne called REMEMBER THE DAY, wherein they are teachers at a small town high school, who marry, and who are permanently separated when he is called to World War I by the draft. But that film hid the tragedy of Payne's death until the end, and left you with great admiration for Colbert's ability to pull herself together and carry on. Payne, who blended in well with Colbert, made himself into a reasonably acceptable marriage partner. Welles is just out of the ballpark here.
The film is well acted by the cast (even the leads), although George Brent gives another of his patented drab performances. The young Natalie Wood appears as the daughter of the German doctor who saved Welles, whom Welles in turn brings with him to America as war in Europe breaks out again. More interesting is Richard Long, playing the grown up son of Welles, determined to fight for the U.S. in the coming war (despite Colbert's fears). This was his first film too, and one suspects that his working with Welles may have been the reason that he was cast as Noah Longstreet (Loretta Young's younger brother) in THE STRANGER, Welles' 1946 film noir about another, more sinister, European war refugee coming to America.
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