The Years Between

Subtle drama about war and marriage. Valerie Hobson plays uppercrust wife who gets a telegram during WW II stating her husband (Michael Redgrave) has been killed. To get her out of her deep depression, friends persuade her to take her husband's seat in Parliament. She is surprised to learn she liked it. The years go by.

She's about to married a local dullard when she gets another telegram. Redgrave is alive after all, and has been a prisoner of war for all these years. When he returns, things are very unsettling. He expects everything to be the way it was, but much has changed, especially the wife.

He expects her to give up her seat, but she refuses. As the postman (Edward Rigby) keeps telling everyone, nothing will be the same after the war. He's right. Hobson finds she's indifferent to Redgrave after all these years. He keeps complaining about all the changes.

The kicker is what he really did during the war, what he couldn't tell anyone, even his wife.

Redgrave and Hobson are terrific in their roles, even if they are written rather narrowly. Flora Robson is also solid as the "nanny" who seems to have more common sense than either the husband or the wife. Others include James McKechnie as the dullard, Felix Aylmer as a politician, Dulcie Gray as Judy, Esma Cannon as the cook, and Wylie Watson as Venning.

Worth a look.

Colonel Michael Wentworth (Michael Redgrave) goes to war and is reported dead after some time. His wife refuses to accept that he is dead and is slowly but definitely breaking up especially psychologically, so she is persuaded to do something about her situation and take her husband's seat in parliament, although she knows nothing about politics. However, she grows into the profession and even becomes popular, and so four years pass, and after this eternity of a bloody war the husband suddenly comes home without warning. He has been a prisoner of war and has had no possibility to communicate about his surviving his own death. Then the problems begin. Michael Redgrave and Valerie Hobson are always worth watching, and this is even a story by Daphne du Maurier, who wrote only good stories (like "Rebecca"). So the film is interesting indeed but totally without drama, it's like a domestic play about difficulties of relationships because of the war, another man coming home from the war having lost his leg in it and doesn't want to continue with his wife any more because of that, and other things like that. It's all right as a time document, anticipating the problems resulting from the peace, problems that no one had expected and that suddenly come importuning, causing new conflicts where there were none. Good play, good direction, good music, but merely an insight just passing by.

Compton Bennett deserves a high perched niche in British cinema for his clearly above average direction of films such as THE YEARS BETWEEN, SO LITTLE TIME, THE DESPERATE MOMENT.

A theatrical play by Daphne du Maurier provides the basis for YEARS BETWEEN. As tends to be the note with du Maurier, female and male characters interact rather realistically, in this instance a couple (Hobson and Redgrave) separated early on in WWII when the hubby goes to war and within a week is declared deceased by the Home Office. Of course, he is alive and returns to reclaim his wife and also his position as MP... which she has fllled in the meantime. What emerges is a way ahead of its time battle of the sexes regarding jobs and how women are as good, if not better than, men at what they do. The point is further driven home by a rather secretive Redgrave who fails to tell his beloved wife why he did not try to apprise her of his live status, even after he returns home.

Meanwhile, Hobson develops the hots for a close friend of Redgrave's - Richard, well played by James McKechnie - and even decides to marry him because she begins to find Redgrave's obtuse selfishness more than a trifle intolerable.

Well, she finds out that he had no option but hide that intelligence from her (though he had no reason to do so after his return) and her wifely loyalty eventually wins the day.

Competent cinematography by Reginald Wyer, largely credible though convenient, too, script, with acting by Redgrave, Hobson, Robson and McKechnie the cherry on a cake of a flick.

Definitely worth watching. 8/10.

It was a nice surprise that women during WW2 was a subject in the first half of the movie. This period in time is when women learned they could work, take care of their family and do what they needed to do. This film was pro-women which is surprising in this 1946 picture. I thought Michael Redgrave did a fine job in this role. Yes he was stiff but I think he did a fine job in betraying how men reacted to returning home to a different world and women. I think this film was realistic in how WW2 changed lives in more than one way. I still believe that the movie 'The Best Years of our Lives' was the best after-WW2 movie and I'll give 'The Years Between' second best.

MP Michael Graves is called up and is soon reported as dead. His widow, Valerie Hobson, is devastated. A conspiracy sets up to give her a purpose, by running her for her husband's seat. Soon enough she is making her maiden speech in Parliament, and is thinking about remarrying, Then Redgrave returns.

This Enoch Arden tale is given a modernist twist, with the subtext brought out into the open: hasn't Redgrave a right to expect to come back to the England and the marriage her left? Hasn't Miss Hobson the right to keep the position she has earned? It's based on a Daphne Du Maurier play, given the gleam that Sidney Box's production team could. I found the first half to be more enjoyable, watching Miss Hobson grow.... and the second half is well done, but it seems grumpy.