Looking Forward (1933)

User Rating:

6.7/10   

Director:

Clarence Brown

Writers:

Dodie Smith (play)
Bess Meredyth (writer) ...

Release Date:

28 April 1933 (USA)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

Depression Era story set in London has department store owner (Lewis Stone) facing bankruptcy while his family fritters away money...

Plot Keywords:

Department Store | Infidelity | Employer Employee Relationship | Marital Desertion | Rejuvenation

Cast

Lionel Barrymore	...	Tim Benton
Lewis Stone	...	Gabriel Service Sr.
Benita Hume	...	Mrs. Isobel Service
Elizabeth Allan	...	Caroline Service
Phillips Holmes	...	Michael Service
Colin Clive	...	Geoffrey Fielding
Alec B. Francis	...	Mr. Birkenshaw
Doris Lloyd	...	Mrs. Lil Benton
Halliwell Hobbes	...	Mr. James Felton
Douglas Walton	...	Willie Benton
Viva Tattersall	...	Miss Elsie Benton
Lawrence Grant	...	Philip Bendicott
George K. Arthur	...	Mr. Tressitt, Salesman
Charles Irwin	...	Mr. Burton, Clerk
Billy Bevan	...	Mr. Barker, Night Watchman

Also Known As:

Service, Yesterday's Rich (USA) (working title)
The New Deal

Runtime:

82 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Sound System)

Certification:

USA:Approved

Company:

Cosmopolitan Productions

Trivia:

The title of the movie was taken from the book written by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and credited to him onscreen.

Soundtrack:

Liebestraume No. 3

Misguided

Understandably, but regrettably, this understated drama of sympathetic characters facing a lifetime of honest effort gone to waste is transformed into propaganda for facing the Depression (1930s) with courage and determination. That the filmmakers make a 180-degree turn toward optimism and a (hopefully) better future is commendable in regard to boosting public morale during economically bleak times, but in doing so they sacrifice the touching story that had been developed up to that point.

As a businessman trying to stoically face the demise an operation that has supported his family for generations in comfort and style, Lewis Stone is superb; no less so Lionel Barrymore as a dull, unimaginative clerk whose long-standing devotion to the company gives him a reason to look forward to each day - until he is laid off when the staff must be reduced. Their scenes together are especially moving: low-key, but charged with emotion. All of this, however, goes for naught when the film's "message" is thrust at us during the final twenty minutes. Lewis Stone's despair, along with his conviction that the business cannot possibly survive another six months, is transformed into a resolve that somehow a way will be found to carry on and prosper. Equally unconvincing is Lionel Barrymore's becoming something of an entrepreneur in order to support his family - he who was deemed expendable by the company for lacking ambition and imagination. The upbeat ending may have been exactly what the times called for, but a well-wrought drama was lost in the process.