Lovesusti The Worst Film Ever

Steineded How sad is this?

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Fatma Suarez The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Alex da Silva Escaped murderer George Brent (Dan) is caught in Hong Kong by detective Pat O'Brien (Steve) who has been tracking him. Together, they board a cruise ship that will take Brent back to San Francisco where he is due to hang. Meanwhile, Merle Oberon (Joan) is dying from a heart disease and is spending her final days as a free spirit travelling the world. She is on the same cruise ship, and after a previous chance encounter in Hong Kong, Brent and Oberon re-acquaint themselves on the ship. Brent hides his true identity and Oberon keeps her secret to herself. Can they find happiness together? Well, the film is okay. I found Merle Oberon's character pretty annoying and I wish the story had focused more on the George Brent escape story. The film needed more to it. Every time you think the film is going somewhere, Oberon appears and takes things back to planet soppy and bland. The cast did fine with a couple of exceptions – petty crook Frank McHugh (Rockingham T Rockingham) is annoying as a drunk but good when he plays it straight whilst comedy character wealthy Eric Blore (Harold) is never funny in this outing. The ending is romantic and the film is basically a soppy romance. I was a bit disappointed.One thing that did make me chuckle – at the beginning of the film, we are told that Merle is taking Amyl Nitrate as a cure for her heart problem! No wonder her chances of making it aren't very good. She must have had a lunatic as a doctor. My experience of the drug is of getting a rush of blood to the head to the point where your face goes red, your heart beat speeds up rapidly and you fall about in uncontrollable hysterics. It was great fun, just a shame that it's really BAD for you. It explodes your brain cells, gives you headaches and sends your heartbeat racing. It also relaxes your anal muscles which is why it was a popular drug with the gay community – probably still is. So, maybe Merle was taking it so she could enjoy loads of anal sex whilst cranking up her heart rate so that she dies! Is Oberon walking funny by the end of the film - watch and find out.

theowinthrop This is a remake (of the William Powell - Kay Francis film ONE WAY PASSAGE) that actually lives up to the merits of the original. It is rare for remakes to be as good as the films they replace in public circulation (think of Marlon Brando's and Mel Gibson's two versions of MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY - and THE BOUNTY - and compare their more "balanced" views of Captain Bligh with the original 1935 classic with Clark Gable, Charles Laughton, and Franchot Tone). Powell and Francis made the doomed lovers in the original fine characterizations. They were hard to beat. Yet in this film (made under a decade later), George Brent and Merle Oberon did as well with the parts.Brent and Oberon are usually considered, somewhat unfairly, second-raters as performers. Not quite true at all. Oberon was more than memorable as Catherine Earnshaw in WUTHERING HEIGHTS, and she was an accomplished comedian in films like THAT UNCERTAIN FEELING. Brent was not a stiff actor in all of his roles - frequently his parts required him to be quiet too much of the time, or parts were edited out. Witness his role in THE GREAT LIE, where one wonders what Bette Davis and Mary Astor see in him to battle for. Witness too how the restored version of BABY FACE with Barbara Stanwyck made his suicide attempt at the end more reasonable to accept than in the version that had been cut up and circulated for years. His tycoon/playboy is legitimately feeling used, unloved, betrayed by his scheming wife, and Stanwyck's own behavior makes more than enough sense when she does return to him to stand by him in an investigation (not to give up all their wealth as in the idiotic ending of the cut version). If one wants to see Brent in a good role (with meaty scenes and dialog) try his hoofer in FORTY SECOND STREET or his brain surgeon in DARK VICTORY or his madman in THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE. He could act when given the chance.In 'TIL WE MEET AGAIN he and Oberon were given a chance. Like Powell in the original (and similar to Joan Bennett's character in TRADE WINDS), he is on a ship headed across the Pacific Ocean to avoid facing execution for a murder. Brent did kill the man (whom both detective Pat O'Brien and Brent's friend Frank McHugh realize was a bigger creep than most people), but it is murder and he was convicted - but managed to escape. O'Brien has tracked him down to the cruise ship, intending to return with him to the U.S. Brent (hopefully with assistance by McHugh and Binnie Barnes) plans to get off and get lost in one of the Asian lands with no extradition to the U.S. (the actual situation of Japanese threatened militarism in this film is gleefully overlooked - but it is meant to be a fantasy).Unfortunately for Brent he meets the charming, wealthy Oberon (travelling with her friend and companion Geraldine Fitzgerald - as pointed out Brent and Fitgerald were both in DARK VICTORY together). They hit it off. But she does not want him to know, as their romance blooms, that she has a fatal illness. He, similarly, is keeping from her that he is (unless he successfully evades O'Brien) going to be executed in the States. But every time he is about to escape somehow she inadvertently prevents it - until he accidentally learns her secret. At that point he stops trying to flee. Subsequently she learns his secret as well. She makes an attempt to help him escape - but he won't take it. Secretly they both realize that death will actually unite them forever, so why fight it?There are nice touches in the film, the best remembered being the "paradise cocktails" that the doomed lovers drink together - a leitmotif that goes through most of the movie until a final, somewhat mysterious (but hopefully true) concluding shot. There is also the development of O'Brien's character. Warren Hymer had played the detective in the earlier version but as a combination of his comic bumbler and his serious business worker (determined not to lose Powell). But O'Brien's character gets to know (and fall for) Barnes, who reciprocates but still tries to use her hold on him to help Brent. It leads to a climax between them when O'Brien tells her he knows what she tried to do, and forgives her because he loves her, but he also knows her life style (as a con woman) will probably destroy her unless she changes. It is an intense scene, and an odd one for Barnes, who usually is in control of her emotions - she falls apart realizing O'Brien is right (and he does show he'll help save her).Finally there is McHugh, who plays a pretend drunk, always able to time his escape from the local police so he jumps onto a convenient getaway vehicle as they arrive angrily screaming at him. He adds to their discomfort by jeering at them. The film ends with him all alone (Brent dead, Barnes married with O'Brien), and tearfully considering his isolation - something that was part of his criminal persona for so long. All in all 'TIL WE MEET AGAIN is a first rate movie, and should convince the viewer that Brent and Oberon (while not Bogart and Davis) were worthy performers when given good material.

bkoganbing 'Til We Meet Again is a remake of Warner Brothers earlier film, One Way Passage, a story of doomed romance that starred William Powell and Kay Francis. This film and the previous one concerns the shipboard romance of a man being brought back to the United States in custody to face the gas chamber in San Quentin and a terminally ill woman on a cruise for one last fling at life. Taking the parts of Powell and Francis are George Brent and Merle Oberon.I can see Jack Warner's mind at work on this one. The year before George Brent had romanced and treated the terminally ill Bette Davis in Dark Victory. Why not get Brent into a remake of this other film about a dying woman and her last romance? We even get Geraldine Fitzgerald in this one in the same part, best friend to the terminally ill woman.The part of the police lieutenant escorting Brent is built up considerably from One Way Passage where the role was played by Warren Hymer. Here Pat O'Brien is the cop and he's nobody's fool. Still Brent has friends on board, Frank McHugh who's a con man with a nice drunk act and Binnie Barnes who's a con woman with a phony French accent. She goes after O'Brien and not totally in the line of duty. She's also my favorite in this film.Oberon and Brent make a beautiful pair of lovers and one had better have as big a supply of handkerchiefs as one did in watching One Way Passage.

Oldsport57 There are moments in certain movies that, once experienced, turn you, forevermore, into a movie-lover.As those two glasses broke, in a bar in Acapulco, the sound nearly masked by New Years' celebrations and the strains of "Auld Lang Syne", I let out a sob that I can still feel, well more than fifty years later.Dated, trite, corny, awful sound, loud voices, yeah, all of those. But put it aside and revel in this beautiful, gentle, glamorous and romantic love story. Even with all the available cinematographic bells and whistles, it simply could not be made today.