‘When Tomorrow Comes’ or — After the Flood?

John M. Stahl’s ‘When Tomorrow Comes’ (1939) is very much a film of three acts. The good news is that two of them are great. The bad news is they’re so good they leave the third somewhat in the shade.

It opens with waitress and union activist Helen (Irene Dunne) frantically waiting tables in a busy Manhattan café whilst she and the other girls mentally prepare themselves for a big union meeting later that evening where they’ll decide whether or not to strike. The only possible distraction to her cause is Philip (Charles Boyer), a dashing piano player, who flirts with Helen before following her to the meeting. He has no interest in her union’s cause, but he does have an interest in Helen.

So what we’ve got on our hands is a sophisticated, metropolitan romantic comedy concerning politics, social issues, class differences and love. Boyer and Dunne are, not surprisingly, utterly delightful, Stahl’s direction spritely and lithe and it’s all set against some great production design. I’m very much enjoying this.

Then Boyer invites Dunne back to his place for “dinner” and suddenly the whole fast-talking political stuff goes flying out the window with the film turning into… a Roland Emmerich disaster movie?!

It turns out Boyer isn’t the low-paid jobbing piano player Dunne assumed he was but is, instead, famed concert pianist Charles Chagal. As he plays for her at his grand piano, thus allowing all their pent-up lustful emotions to burst out in sonic form, a hurricane lashes his mansion, flashes of lightning and claps of thunder perfectly syncopated to the swelling of his mighty chords (Bernard B. Brown won the Academy Award for Best Sound and you can understand why).

It’s an astonishing scene and one that only becomes more extreme as the storm then erupts beyond being a representation of their sexual urges and into a full-blown apocalyptic event. The waters rise, biblical references are made and the dialogue begins to carry the weighty implication of imminent death.

Dunne mentions this isn’t quite how she imagined the end of the world. “Oh,” Boyer asks, “then how did you imagine it?” to which Dunne replies — “I don’t know. I sort of imagined myself in a beautiful long chiffon robe, standing on the top of a hill. And people dying like flies, all around me.”

Bloody hell, Irene!

It’s an incredible sequence that’s dripping with tenderness, love, and an aching awareness of our mortality.

And then the film reaches its third act and throws all THAT out the window as well with a plot twist/reveal that comes out of bloody nowhere! So now what we’ve got on our hands is a tale of betrayal, mental illness and attempted suicide. The problem isn’t just that all this comes, seemingly, out of left-field or that it doesn’t possess quite the same power as what’s come before but more that it contains great potential that gets a little squandered.

For example — when the third act twist/reveal appears at Dunne’s apartment to exert her claim to Boyer she’s explicitly the storm made flesh and intent on wreaking destruction, so it’s only now we realise, in retrospect, that the hurricane was less a manifestation of Boyer and Dunne’s lust and more the psychic attack of an abandoned lover.

It’s seriously juicy stuff but what could, and possibly SHOULD, develop into a churning maelstrom of erotic jealousy and insanity merely fizzles out leaving me not so much moved, heart-broken or tearful and more thinking “So that’s it?!”

Having said all that, the film gets away with it and pretty effortlessly at that, and there’s too much to enjoy here to complain too loudly. It’s a very good movie, but with just a little bit of tweaking, or a bit more insanity, it could’ve been something really special.