Tomorrow

"Tomorrow" was first an episode of "Playhouse 90" and it was later remade as a movie with the same title which starred Robert Duvall. Of the two, I think both are about equally good.

Fentry is a single man who lives alone and minds his own business. However, his routine is destroyed when a pregnant woman arrives one cold day. She apparently ran away from an abusive husband and is quite ill. Fentry turns out to be a very good and patient man...and eventually she agrees to marry him. The woman soon dies and Fentry was instructed by her that he should raise the baby...and he is determined to be a great father. However, eventually the dead woman's brothers learn about the baby...and they want him. What's next?

The best thing about this show is Richard Boone's performance as Fentry. He was excellent. But I couldn't score the film higher because the ending was both super-depressing and a bit confusing when it shouldn't have been.

Nowadays, spectacular, gimmicky or just complicated is the type of movie (or TV) entertainment most favored, by audiences and critics. Watching the Horton Foote/Faulkner 1960 production "Tomorrow" reminds me of what I like: a subtle, unadorned approach, which Japanese director Ozu perfected, but which can be found in many unsung, or forgotten classics.

I saw the Robert Duvall movie "Tomorrow" in 1971 in theatrical release and was impressed, largely because I was already a Duvall fan from his many TV appearances, soon to grow ever so much more affection for his work after "The Godfather" and so many great movies he made. But I wasn't aware of this decade-earlier "Playhouse 90" version.

Richard Boone introduces it and stars, and is tremendously proud of the work. His underplaying is expert, but what really sets the earlier "Tomorrow" apart is his co-star Kim Stanley. She is a great actress, perhaps the greatest, but her career achievements on the stage are intrinsically ephemeral -you had to be there. But this artifact is so powerful -a performance that is so expressive but never showy or selfishly "showing off" the way so many actresses I adore that it's a revelation to see the greatest at work.

The endurance of the human spirit against all hardships is the theme I most enjoy in cinema, followed only by the cinema of disillusionment (latter at its peak in the works derived from Alberto Moravia). Boone plus Stanley is perfection, right through to his reciting a great poem relevant to the material from Edwin Arnold to end the show.