From This Day Forward

All Brides are Beautiful.

From This Day Forward is directed by John Berry and adapted to screenplay by Garson Kanin and Hugo Butler from the novel All Brides are Beautiful written by Thomas Bell. It stars Joan Fontaine, Mark Stevens, Rosemary DeCamp, Harry Morgan, Wally Brown, Arline Judge and Renny McEvoy. Music is by Leigh Harline and cinematography by George Barnes.

Rom-Dram that finds Stevens and Fontaine as a young couple struggling with the perils and optimism of post-war life. Story unfolds in flashback as Stevens reminisces about how he met Fontaine and their subsequent courtship that was fraught with uncertainty about what the future had in store. The Depression bites hard and Stevens finds himself a kept man as Fon...

Try as she might, Joan Fontaine just cannot make a silk purse from the sow's ear on show here from John Berry. She portrays "Susan", a young assistant in a bookshop who has married "Bill" (Mark Stevens). Flashback fills in the gaps as this young couple meet and fall in love before WWII intervenes and when he returns, the pair must adjust to post war life. The film effectively illustrates the difficulties faced by returning soldiers, and of their spouses and families, as they all try to adapt to their new circumstances. For "Bill", that involves dealing with the ennui (I suppose it might be considered a form of PTSD nowadays) that proves particularly hard to accommodate. The challenges also entail getting a new job and finding the money to k...