There was a fair amount of discussion at the end of World War II about the difficulties combat vets might face in readjusting to normal life. "Till the End of Time" puts many of these concerns up on the screen, but the emotion that comes through so memorably in the superior "Best Years of Our Lives" is mostly absent. That's despite the efforts of Dorothy McGuire (who's perfectly cast here as the maybe-27 "older" war widow who's the only civilian who can realistically relate to college-age vet Guy Madison). Except for McGuire, the actors are all rather limited, including Madison and Robert Mitchum. That and a lackluster script make their characters less than compelling, so their very realistic problems look dismayingly like they were inflicted by soap-opera writers rather than by the war.
Like many other old movies, the film seemed stronger when it appeared. Since then, we've seen so many unhappy returned veterans in films that the three here are like instant clichés. They weren't in 1946, though, and "Till the End of Time" was one of the first movies to tell Saturday-night civilians that, like Cliff (Madison), you didn't have to be badly shot up (like Mitchum and Williams) to have been profoundly changed by battle. To his suburban parents, Cliff is now a mystery, and his mom doesn't at all approve of his new vocabulary or his friendship with a wounded Marine from "Stinking Creek, Texas." This one is mainly for fans of the stars and for those seriously interested in Hollywood's treatment of World War II
Like many other old movies, the film seemed stronger when it appeared. Since then, we've seen so many unhappy returned veterans in films that the three here are like instant clichés. They weren't in 1946, though, and "Till the End of Time" was one of the first movies to tell Saturday-night civilians that, like Cliff (Madison), you didn't have to be badly shot up (like Mitchum and Williams) to have been profoundly changed by battle. To his suburban parents, Cliff is now a mystery, and his mom doesn't at all approve of his new vocabulary or his friendship with a wounded Marine from "Stinking Creek, Texas." This one is mainly for fans of the stars and for those seriously interested in Hollywood's treatment of World War II