The Years Between

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.

The problem about this film is that it admits that the end of the war caused a great deal of marital disharmony and divorces but does not go the whole hog.Unfortunately it does not inhabit the world of the folk who would be watching this in their local Odeons.It had to be about a resistance organiser who is also an MP and his wife who has taken over his seat on the presumption of his death.Then he(Michael Redgrave)turns up having been held in captivity and wants to assume that everything should be as it was before the war.His wife initially does not.At this point the film is i believe reasonably accurate.However given the censorship of the times the most likely outcome is ignored.Whislt there are moments of interest i have to say that notwithstanding the understated performances of all concerned this is far too earnest and dull.

Valerie Hobson ("Diana") is widowed during WWII - her late husband, the local Member of Parliament. After an extended period of mourning that shows little sign of ending, her nanny Flora Robson sets a few wheels in motion that results in her former charge being elected to succeed her husband in Parliament. Initially nervous, she ultimately rises to the task, and manages to fall in love again - this time, thanks to a timely air-raid, with "Richard" (James McKenchnie). Then an altogether different sort of bomb drops - and she must rewind her life some four years and deal with some truly unforeseen circumstances. Hobson is good in this film, as is Robson who delivers quite a few poignant one-liners and even a short speech towards the end on the responsibilities and opportunities of those left to win the peace after the war had been won. Michael Redgrave also features, as "Col. Wentworth", a troubled man with a mission that involved all sorts of sacrifices for King and Country. "Diana" develops her newly found role into one of determination and humanity - she takes up the cudgels for a great many women who were left at home, widowed; their children relocated, having to make ends meet as best they can in the face of the horror of war. It's got something more real about it, this film and as their postman always moans: "things will never be the same again" - he might well be right.

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.

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.