Claudette Colbert was always good no matter what kind of part she had to play, but although never funny she was always the perfect comedienne. Here she displays quite a different sort of character, and the moment she appears on the screen you are touched by her sincere melancholy. She plays a teacher, she has been a teacher all her life, she is about 60 when the film begins, and as she has to wait for the arrival of the public person she has come to catch a glimpse of, she recalls the days before the First World War (1916) when she found her husband, a colleague among the teachers at her school. She had very good relationships with her pupils, and one of them stuck out in particular, who actually became jealous of her becoming husband and almost became a rival of his in sending valentines. The film tells the story of these two lovers of hers, one her husband who never came back from the war (John Payne, very similar to James Stewart here,) and the boy, who eventually grew up to become a presidential candidate. The film is very sweet and warm, it's a heart-warming picture, it is well made with good music by Alfred Newman and well up to the best American standard of the time, and anyone could enjoy it for its genuine humanity bordering on sentimentality but never falling out of character. This kind of lovable Hollywood pictures were typical at the time, while the flair for this Hollywood sweetness got hopelessly lost by the war that broke out the year this film was made, 1941.
