Newspaperman Larry Stevens (Dick Powell) makes a wish to see tomorrowâs newspaper and it comes true when his deceased colleague shows up with the paper. This brings him only trouble, except for bringing him closer to his new-found girlfriend, Sylvia Smith (Linda Darnell)
RenĂ© Clair was a French director that mixed comedy with Fantasy. His works all have a similar feelâgentle, moralistic, fun, and a bit simple. They are nicely filmed with dramatic B&W cinematography and casual editing. His English language talkies include The Ghost Goes West, Beauty and the Devil, and the superb I Married a Witch. It Happened Tomorrow feels like the others. The single most applicable word would be âcute.â Dick Powell is likable, though not captivating as the leadâwords that describe him in every movie. Darnell is adorable and supplies the charisma that Powell lacks.
But It Happened Tomorrow lags behind those others by being heavy-handed with its silly message, but worse, it is dated, or at least I think it is. In 1944, was this story fresh? By now we all have seen or read enough time travel stories that we know the basic rules. If you know the future, you donât draw excessive attention to yourself. If you know that there is a robbery before it happens, you donât tell everyone about it, and certainly not the police. Perhaps the way Larry acts made sense in 1944, but watching it in 2017, I spent half the time saying, âFor Godâs sake donât do that!â The story is old tropes run into the ground such that no one would use them now.
Thereâs also an unwanted framing piece that tells us at the beginning how the relationship and knowing the future will work out, which cuts away any suspense (but to be fair, with a magical romantic comedy, it was pretty clear how things were going to work out).
It Happened Tomorrow is a nice little fantasy about time whose time has past.