Great Film overall

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

I'LL BE SEEING YOU's origin in a popular radio drama of the time is betrayed by its occasional and generally superfluous narration, and there are other minor flaws, but they do little to dampen an emotional impact that must have been especially poignant for its contemporary audiences. IBSY gives us the classic story of two wounded souls finding strength and healing in their love for one another. It centers on the psychological phenomenon called 'shell shock' during the First World War, 'battle fatigue' during the Second, 'psycho-neurosis' in the movie and 'ptsd' today. The terms become longer and the words more abstract, but the problem remains. The symptoms of severe stress don't necessarily go away once the stress is over. That a popular film would concern itself with this subject while in the midst of a great war is especially impressive.Still, I'LL BE SEEING YOU is a romance more than anything, almost accidentally set in the middle of a war. Joseph Cotton is a returning soldier just out of a psychiatric hospital to see if he's ready to return to normal life. Ginger Rogers is out of a prison on a temporary furlough (the charges seem quite shaky from what we see in a flashback that is not a very successful part of the picture), one would guess as a prelude to a possible parole though that is never made clear. They both find themselves alienated from their surroundings. It's no surprise that they would be attracted to one another as lifelines if nothing else. It's also no wonder that such a drama would be set during the Christmas season.Cotton and Rogers both severely (and brilliantly) underplay their roles, always a good idea when playing a potentially sentimentalized subject, and they make the film a beautifully understated love story disguised by their respective traumas. One of the best scenes is their early date when they go to a movie. It's a blood and guts war drama. We see Rogers staring intently at the screen while Cotton mostly looks downward. Afterwards, outside the theater he placidly watches a few young boys running about playing soldiers. Walking away with Ginger, Cotton finally opens up in answer to her question as to whether the movie was what the war was really like. Obviously relieved, he takes her to a diner for a cup of coffee, but the waiter (Chill Wills), a victim of shell shock from the First World War, reminds him of himself and Cotton walks away upset, delivering Rogers to her uncle's house and then abruptly leaving her. It's a brilliantly understated sequence and typical of the film's low-keyed realism (speaking of realism, did you know that Ginger Rogers really had a husband who fought in the front lines on the Pacific island of Tarawa? She must have felt this the most hyper-realistic scene of her career).The alert viewer can pick up many tidbits about life on the home front during World War II. Chocolate bars are not available at news stands, alcoholic beverages are not easily available, either, and well-to-do retirees find themselves taking a bus and then walking some distance to the golf course instead of using up their gas rations. I'm not so sure that one could so easily procure fancy new dresses for a New Year's Eve party, however.That New Year's Eve celebration is an exhilarating one both for the audience watching and for the soldier played by Joseph Cotton. It's followed by the even greater excitement of the dog attack (not to mention the very different kind of excitement of some tender love scenes with his girl). Very realistically, this all combines to trigger a delayed anxiety attack which is brilliantly handled by Cotton. The modern film-goer may find it strange that such an attack does not immediately lead to mass murder, or at least attempted suicide.Director William Dieterle made a flock of excellent films during his long career and one or two great ones. If I'LL BE SEEING YOU isn't a great film, it comes within shouting distance of one. Joseph Cotton was at the peak of his career and Ginger Rogers at the tail end of the peak of her film career, and they are both perfect in their lead roles. Spring Byington and Tom Tully provide terrific support, and though I find Shirley Temple's performance to be more irritating than anything else, it may be more the fault of the character than the actress. I'LL BE SEEING YOU really ought to be a lot better known than it is. Thanks to TCM, there's still hope that it will be.

Ginger Rogers looks a little mature to be a single gal still holding onto her virtue; here, as a convicted felon out on a furlough for the Christmas holiday, the actress is supposed to be wistful and vulnerable, but she appears seasoned. Framed in flashback (which certainly doesn't help matters), Rogers is revealed to have killed her boss by accident--a wolf on the make, he was standing too close to an open window--but her story apparently didn't wash in court as she was packed off to the pokey. As a sergeant also on leave, Joseph Cotten has his own problems (deep-seated, it appears), but there's nothing much else to this plot beyond the obvious: when will he find out she's a jailbird? As Rogers' cousin, Shirley Temple is almost as miscast as Ginger; groomed and trained to always give her all, Temple's impersonation of a 'typical' American teenager is a little bit frightening (casual, flip talk doesn't come easily to Shirley, she's too eager to punch her scenes across). An old-fashioned weepie in the worst sense, the movie is cobwebby with clichés and contrivances that should have smart viewers saying "I'll be seeing you" long before the end credits. ** from ****

If there is ever a domestic drama of what we were fighting for this war for, this movie is the prototype for that kind of film. Two strangers, both in their own prisons, one physically and the other metaphorically, meet on a train, spend the Christmas holidays together, fall in love and must part. She is Ginger Rogers, in prison for manslaughter (on a charge that obviously should have been dismissed) and he is Joseph Cotten, suffering from severe shell-shock. They are star-crossed lovers fated to be parted, but with hope still lingering in their hearts, they will end up together.Spring Byington and Tom Tryon are Rogers' gracious aunt and uncle, bringing temporary joy into their lives as the holidays come and go, from a very Merry Christmas to a romantic New Year's Eve. Each of them face psychological trauma (she is even afraid to step one inch beyond the state line which they arrive at while walking along the river bank) as their love grows, but they are soothed by the beautiful title song, one of the most fabulous war themes ever written, and still popular today. (A memorable "Designing Women" episode wisely utilized it as one of Jean Smart's character's fantasies).Cotten's shell-shock is dealt with in the most subtle of ways, his manner changing when a group of boys run around the streets shooting toy guns, and an overly chatty soda jerk (Chill Wills) going on about his own war experiences. A frighting encounter with a vicious dog and some politicians who question Cotten about his political believes also subtly express the horrors that Cotten is feeling inside.The only fly in the ointment is Shirley Temple, a precocious teenage girl who fulfills that well-known saying about good intentions. Her character wouldn't be so annoying if this wasn't an exact replica of practically every role she'd play during the 1940's, particularly in the same year's "Since You Went Away". Fortunately, the romance between Rogers and Cotten is so moving that it overshadows this minor mishap. While the lover's farewell scene isn't as famous as the Jennifer Jones/Robert Walker farewell in "Since You Went Away" (ironically produced by the same man as this film, David Selznick), it gives way to the feeling that in spite of its horrors, World War II was the most romantic war in history.

This could almost have formed a segment of Since You Went Away which Joseph Cotton and Shirley Temple made that same year. It's also referential in borrowing the basic plot of One-Way Passage (itself remade as Till We Meet Again) substituting a train for an ocean liner but retaining the criminal and health elements; in One-Way Passage William Powell is a convict being escorted back to the States by a cop, Pat O'Brien, who meets on board ship Merle Oberon, who is terminally ill. Both conceal these rather important facts from the other and fall in love. This time around the roles are reversed and it is Ginger Rogers who is serving a prison sentence for manslaughter and has been released in order to spend Christmas with an aunt and Joseph Cotton who is not terminally ill but suffering with serious combat fatigue. Once again Rogers finds herself sharing a bedroom with a teenager and falling for a soldier - four years earlier she bunked with Diana Lynn in and fell for Ray Milland in Billy Wilder's The Major and the Minor. It's a pleasant, sentimental, hokey even, entry a reminder of how wholesome films used to be.