I'll Be Seeing You Reviews

A quietly moving film based on a radio play that starred James Cagney and Gertrude Lawrence, I'LL BE SEEING YOU is a love story with quite a twist. Rogers is on Christmas furlough from the penitentiary where she is serving a term for manslaughter. She accidentally killed her boss when the man made sexual advances and she had to defend herself. She meets Cotten, a shell-shocked veteran of the war. He is on a brief Christmas holiday away from the hospital where he is being treated in the psychiatric ward. They're thrown together by fate on a train; she's visiting relatives and he has been sent out by his doctors who want to see if he's fit to join the population. He's quite nervous but calms down with Rogers, who invites him to stay at her home for his 10-day vacation. The central portion of the film is the respite they share, with all the usual Christmas scenes, but done in such excellent taste that they never appear mawkish. Cotten struggles with his memories and Rogers doesn't reveal the details of her situation. When they find that they are attracted to one another she decides to come clean. They then struggle to come to terms with each other's problems. Cotten is very believable as a man on the verge of a breakdown. Rogers again proved that she didn't need a pianist or tap shoes to give a compelling performance. Temple was 17 when she played Rogers' sister and didn't seem to be going through an "awkward age" at all. Dieterle's directorial hand was a trifle heavy at times, but not enough to mar this sleeper.