Highly Overrated But Still Good

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

I love the fantasy-themed movies from cinema's golden age about life after death, like "A Matter of Life and Death", "It's A Wonderful Life", "Heaven Can Wait" and many more. I likewise love the "time" plays of JB Priestley, like "An Inspector Calls", "Time And The Conways", "I Have Passed This Way Before" etc all of which this 1944 feature put me in mind of. The fact it co-starred possibly my favourite actor of that time, John Garfield, made it even more of a treat.Pretty obviously based on a popular recent stage play, you can almost see the actors lining up their positions and cues on this very studio-bound production, it's a very talky piece as it seeks to rather hammer home it's "do good to others as others would you" message similarly to the afore-mentioned "An Inspector Calls".The disparate characters gathered on the dark, empty ocean liner all pretty much get their just desserts, with the selfish and irredeemable going to bad places, the good or sinned against getting everlasting reward (one is promised endless games of golf with his chums, which sure sounds like heaven to me) which just leaves the borderline cases for special consideration.These include smart-aleck charlatan Garfield and his equally cynical, money-grabbing girlfriend, who both have to look to themselves for their own deliverance, the former assisted in this from an unexpected source. Then there's suicide victim Paul Heinreid and his devoted-'til-death wife who are accordingly considered special cases.Joining them on the journey are their on-board hosts, avuncular steward, Edmund Gwenn and as the heaven or hell decision-maker Sydney Greenstreet, the latter bedecked in an outsize Marty Hopkirk suit.I predicted the ending well in advance but other aspects of the film caught me by surprise. With a surprising lack of special effects, the director does a convincing job of putting across the extraordinary plights of all the individuals concerned.So there you have it, an other-worldly morality tale, meant to send you home thinking hard after viewing it then vowing no doubt to better yourself and help your poorer and downtrodden fellow man and woman and it's easy to see its message as a metaphor for the repudiation of the recent Nazi occupation of Western Europe. Of course you don't need to take it as seriously as all that, but whichever way you do, you'll be entertained.

Nice cast and they all do well by their roles. There's the cynical newspaper reporter -- this is 1944 and they still had newspapers -- and his actress manqué girl friend, the idealistic reverend, the humble English housemaid, the strutting and demanding billionaire, the comic Brooklynite, an elderly couple of stiff social climbers, and they're all dead -- killed in a London air raid.They're a little foggy at first but then settle down aboard what they believe to be a freighter bound for New York. Accidentally thrown into the group are a couple of suicides -- Paul Henreid and Eleanor Parker -- who know that they and everyone else is dead, which puts them a leg up on the others. Edmund Gwen is the steward who takes care of all the questions and details. There are no other personnel, no ship's crew, no cook, no nothing.If it all sounds much like a staged play that's because that's pretty much what it is. Sutton Vane's play ran for 144 performances and the effort he must have put into writing a kind of Twilight Zone episode while keeping the audience's interest is on full display. It's wordy. It's full of confrontations, solace, braggadocio, yawping, wonderment, and anger. John Garfield, as the deceased reporter, is his usual cynical tough guy but he's given so many lines of gibberish ("The sky is falling; the cow jumped over the moon; the stock market has crashed") that it stretches his talent to the creaking point, as it would anyone's.I found it rather long and dull. The only real tension involves the passengers finding out one by one, by different means, what's going on. The development and disposal of characters is predictable. Best elements of the film: (1) Eleanor Parker's youthful radiance, and (2) Eric Wolfgang Korngold's soaring and bombastic musical score.

A group of passengers destined to board a ship to New York are caught in an air raid and their taxi is bombed. At the same time, Henry (Paul Henreid) and Ann (Eleanor Parker) enter a suicide pact in Henry's flat, seal the windows and turn on the gas. We then find the story moves onto a ship where the only passengers are the cast that we have been previously introduced to. Ann realizes that they are all dead. The ship's steward, Scrubby (Edmund Gwenn) asks that Ann and Henry don't tell the other passengers as they haven't yet realized what has happened to them. We find out about the various characters before we are introduced to the Examiner (Sydney Greenstreet) who must send them on to either Heaven or Hell. What will be the fate of the two suicides....? I like this film a lot. I like the story and I like the cast. The weak link is Paul Henreid who can be too over-dramatic. There are moments that will bring tears to your eyes, eg, the fate of Mrs Midget (Sara Allgood) and the sequence at the end where only Henry and Ann remain on board and what happens next......"This is too cruel"......The film works because we are given a cast of players, some of whom we like and some of who we don't and we can have fun anticipating what their outcomes will be. You won't guess any of them but they are all satisfying, as is the film's conclusion when only Henry and Ann remain with Scrubby. Definitely worth seeing again.

I stumbled upon this film on TCM and found it engrossing enough to watch all the way through. It is a bit "talky," but that's what you want in a play, after all, so long as it's not boring! Unlike some other reviewers, I found the music track intrusive and distracting and feel the movie would have worked more effectively without it, letting the words create their own "music," so to speak.The performances are serviceable all around, with perhaps Edmund Gwenn the standout, as some have noted. I also enjoyed the "surprise ending," sort of a unique twist in this genre of "we're not-quite-dead" tales.In any event, the next time this one comes around, I recommend it!