The final sequence haunts me (obviously above reason). I cannot understand how the scene could be analyzed purely in relation with spatial organization, performances, or script's expectations, as a whole or each part separately. Moreover, if there is any style here, it dissolves in pure abstraction. The scene is mainly a single medium shot of both actors sitting side by side at a table. Two glasses and a bottle of wine on the table. Two candles at both front corners, delimiting the shot's borders. That's about all. Charles Boyer was Charles Boyer, and Irene Dunne, Irene Dunne. I do not trust the additive value of the summation of all aforementioned elements. I cannot understand my astonishment but in this distinct feeling of both renunciation and uprooting, which leaves its mark on all scenes, in the short breath of the suffocating voices, in the petrified bodies that do not belong to this world, in the icy ridges of a frame with no way out. The voice is here a muffled cry in front of an unbreakable wall.
Review of When Tomorrow Comes
