There's Always Tomorrow

Clifford Groves is a successful toy manufacturer, not that his family seems to care or give him any attention. One day, Norma Miller Vale knocks on his door. Twenty years ago, she worked for him; now, she's a sought-after designer wanting to check how he is doing. The story unfolds from there. In the first act, Sirk lays down the plot materials quite coarsely: the character design, the tensions, and the "accidental meeting." But after that, he skillfully and delicately navigates the forces that activate them, the emotions, the blows, the passion, the agony, and as per usual with Sirk, he does so with a combination of sentiment and irony. There's Always Tomorrow is a kind of farewell chapter for the collaboration between Barbara Stanwyck and Fred McMurray after Remember the Night and Double Indemnity - relationships that always fail. Here, when they are in their fifth decade, passion gives way to melancholy for what has been lost and reconciliation with what remains.