One of the most charming light comedies to come out of Ealing, and Robert Stevenson's last British film before his flight to Hollywood, 'Return to Yesterday'is a veritable treasure trove of British character actors of the period (including Frank Pettingell, Dame May Witty, O.B. Clarence and Garry Marsh) all ably led by Clive Brook in one of his most sensitive screen performances, and one well up to the heights of his later triumph in 'On Approval'. The film also benefits, however, from a clever script (based on a play by Robert Morley), some nostalgic location shooting at Paddington station and on the GWR main line near Dawlish, and a delightful evocation of British seaside life in the last summer before war took hold. Stevenson's direction is characteristically deft and lends the movie a welcome air of spontaneity. Note, for instance, the last shot of O.B. Clarence and his reaction to being tickled from behind - with many directors, this would have ended up on the cutting room floor. Not so with Stevenson, and this film throughout is imbued with the same sense of fun which he brought to his better-known movies for Disney. Though its story of thwarted love is common enough, 'Return to Yesterday' simmers with a love of film and theatre - and the world which was about to be lost forever in the years of war and the privation which followed it. Call it sentimental if you will - but, once watched, this is a film you'll return to again and again.
