I've Lived Before

Made on a shoestring budget ,this movie was,at the time of its release , ahead of its time ,predating such works as "bid time return" "Audrey Rose" " fearless" and many more .Time warp was rarely used then ("portrait of Jennie" (1949) was a notable exception though)

An aging Ann Harding is the stand -out : she who was young in "Peter Ibbetson" (1935) ,a masterpiece of the fantasy genre , is ideally cast as this war fiancée who lost her sweetheart when his plane crashed in 1918.

The movie is shrouded in mystery ;clues are given to the viewer: a twelve-year -old drives a plane without having learned to do it ,the strange chemistry between the captain and his passenger ,the strange words the survivor utters when he regains consciousness .

The movie may be too talky for some, but it proves that a fantasy tale does not need a ton of special effects to impress the viewer ; it may be,according to your own sensitivity a Christian movie (soul is immortal) or a mystery science will later explain (the pychiatrist).

... here at age 53, has quite a bit to do with how well this film works.

First scene, there is a WWI dogfight going on, and an allied plane crashes and burns. Next scene, it is a 1931 air show, and some twelve year old kid is flying around in one of the old WWI planes. The people on the ground are justifiably panicked. But the kid lands the plane like a pro. When questioned about it, the kid says he just seemed to know how to fly and land the plane. Jump to present day and that kid who has grown up to be pilot John Bolan (Jock Mahoney) is boarding his plane. He and the copilot indulge in small talk about John's upcoming marriage. But then John sees a passenger (Ann Harding as Jane Stone). He asks her if they know each other or if she has ever flown this airline before. She says no to both, in fact it is the first time she has flown. John goes back to the cockpit, somewhat in a daze. Then he starts to drive the plane into the ground, talking about the flames and how he's been shot. The copilot has to knock the pilot out to get him to relinquish control so that he can guide the plane to safety.

On the ground, and in the hospital, John Bolan thinks that he is WWI pilot Peter Stephens, killed in a dogfight in 1918. He does come to his senses eventually, but still has memories of the dead WWI pilot and feels he is the reincarnation of this man. He doesn't want to spend his life being haunted by this man he never knew, and believes that passenger Jane Stone is the key to what is going on, since seeing her and seeming to recognize her is what brought on his "attack" in the cockpit.

This film was an unexpected delight for me. I had never heard of it, and it looks spartanly done as though it were a poverty row film by that era, although it was made by Universal. It has no big names in the cast except for Ms. Harding, whose heyday was really the 1930s. John McIntyre, one of the great character actors, has a larger part than I am accustomed to seeing him in as John's sympathetic doctor after his breakdown, the fatherly voice of reason.

Several surprises in this film. First, nobody thinks John is a fraud. They all think him a good man in search of solutions. At worst obsessed, but not a liar. Second, there are no firm conclusions. In the end, the doctor says that man is only beginning to understand the mind, and there could be any number of explanations as to what has transpired. Third, Ann Harding commands your attention as much at age 53 as she did at age 28. She is truly timeless. Finally, John, after having what appears as a psychotic break and almost crashing one of their airplanes with 28 passengers aboard, is assured by his boss that all of his medical bills will be taken care of! Fat chance of that happening today. And the boss that assures him of this is played by Raymond Bailey, who ironically played skinflint banker Milburn Drysdale on the long running TV show The Beverly Hillbillies .

This is really worth seeking out.

****SPOILERS**** Have we lived before? Is reincarnation a fact that can be proved scientifically as well as believed philosophically? This mystery of life after death, or death before life, has baffled the most renowned minds and thinkers since the dawn of recorded history; from the Orient to ancient Egypt and Greece and to the great philosophers of Europe from the middle ages to modern times.

John Bolan, Jock Mahoney, is a commercial pilot who had a fascination with flying since he was a little boy back in Schenectady New York. At the age of 12 in 1931 young Johnny got into the cockpit of a bi-plane and few and landed it like a seasoned pilot. It was the first time that Johnny ever was on a plane much less fly it.

One afternoon when he was about to fly his plane to New York John sees an elderly woman passenger and all of a sudden his mind fills up with memories of a past life that he led. John sees himself as a Let. Peter Stevens a WWI US Army pilot who was shot down over Villars France on April 29, 1918. It's that tragic memory almost causes John to crash his plane with him and all on board now in 1956.

Hospitalized John's thoughts of a life before has him leave and go investigate if there really was a Let. Peter Stevens who was killed in an air battle over France in 1918. Seeing his good friend and lawyer Robert Allen,Simon Scott, about the matter Robert checked out the information that John gave him and comes back with a hit; there was a Let. Peter Stevens and he was shot down over France in April 1918.

John now finds out who that passenger who brought back those memories of WWI and finds out that her name is Jane Stone, Ann Harding, and goes to Philadelphia where she lives. He's determined find out from her if she knew Let. Peter Stevens and, to John's surprise,is informed by Jane that not only did she know Peter Stevens but was engaged to marry him! This revelation by John being Peter, in another life, leaves Jane almost in shock and asks John to please leave.

John who never believed in, or even thought about, reincarnation now is firmly convinced that he lived before and lived the life of Peter Stevens. Nothing that the doctors or psychiatrists at the hospital say can convince John otherwise other then the unproven fact that, like the movie says, "He lived before". The only thing that can positively prove that he was Peter Stevens in another life is for the reluctant Jane Stone, who's persuaded by John's fiancée Lois Gordon (Leigh Snowden), to come to New York. John needs Jane to confirm events between her and Peter that only she knows about. With that John as well as Jane can put the case of Peter Stevens to rest one way or another and see if the theory of reincarnation is in fact a fact or not a fact.

Intelligent film about a mysterious subject, reincarnation, and trying to be not too obviously for or against it. Even though the end of "I've Lived Before" does make a strong case for rebirth it does it in an honest and un-sensational way. Whenever I think about the fact or myth of reincarnation I'm always reminded of the quote by the celebrated 18th century French author and philosopher Voltaire who said of the theory of reincarnation: "It is not more surprising to be born twice then once".

This shouldn't be very good. It's a B movie about a pilot who suspects he's reincarnated. It feels like an extended episode of One Step Beyond. The whole movie is just people talking. The only action is the opening plane scenes and one of those is almost certainly footage from another film. Still, I found myself glued to the screen from beginning to end. It probably could have been 10 minutes shorter but, besides that, I don't really have any complaints.

This film was released during the short-lived "Bridey Murphy" reincarnation craze of the mid-1950s. As such, I expected it to be somewhat exploitative, but it actually turned out to be a serious, well-intentioned study of reincarnation that presented alternate viewpoints, explored psychological explanations, and told the story of someone whose reincarnation story appears to be true. Jock Mahoney, usually associated with western and jungle films, does a fine job as a pilot who has strange, unexpected flashes of memories and unexplained knowledge from the life of a World War I pilot who died in 1918. My teenaged daughter, who was working on the computer in the same room where I was watching this film, stopped her work a few minutes into the film, and soon after came over to the couch and watched the rest of the film, riveted. I should state that this is a low-budget B-movie and contains a lot of talky sequences and serious-minded soliloquies--the kind of things that are not too popular with today's jaded, ironic screenwriters-- but those who would enjoy a serious (although in some ways naive) examination of reincarnation on a b-movie level should find this film worth seeking out.