Moviecut—Next Time We Love

source: Next Time We Love

Jimmy Stewart's first big role. This is not a romance we are used to with a happily ever after ending. Not even close. Maybe that would make it interesting and worthwhile but meh, I'm not all that impressed with this. You can see the immense talent in the young 27 year old Jimmy but he is still very much coming into his own here. Not the best vehicle for him considering I would never guess his character to be a man under at least 30. Quite a mature role for such a youngster to Hollywood. Still an okay, quick film that isn't his best but is from such a great era that it's hard to say it's bad! 5.7 / 10 stars --Zoooma, a Kat Pirate Screener

Stewart's first breakout role. The magnetism between Sullavan and Stewart is undeniable in this sophisticated story about a couple whose careers don't quite mesh. Their divergent careers inevitably causes their marriage to be a rocky one with many ups and downs. The plot, although a progressive one ahead of its time, is not an appealing one. I wanted to like this movie, but the plot kept me from it. It fell flat and seemed rushed.

This is a very early Stewart film that really gave him his first big break with a leading role. Sixth billed in "Murder Man" and fifth billed in "Rose Marie", he was barely visible in his first two features at MGM. On loan to Universal, here he was teamed with Margaret Sullivan, and together they play a couple that marries on impulse and then begin pursuing their own individual careers - she is an actress, he is a journalist. Conflict develops when her career takes off and his does not. This film is very typical of those melodramas that were so common in the 1930's, but it is still interesting to see what Stewart does with this early role in his career. Stewart and Sullivan have a better chance to show off their chemistry in 1938's "Shopworn Angel", still it is a good look at a film made right before the Laemmle's lost Universal to creditors. I'd recommend it mainly for the performances.

This movie is Jimmy Stewart's first leading male character role. Supposedly, Margaret Sullavan had helped in recruiting him for the movie. The movie deals with a couple whose relationship is tested by the career aspirations of each other. The movie deals with a subject that is ground breaking for its time. Married women were relegated to being housewives prior to World War II. Women had also gotten the right to vote in the previous decade. The relationship between the spouses after their marriage becomes strained as the husband aspires to be a reporter (and getting stationed overseas) while the wife aspires to be a stage star. Their baby's birth becomes an additional dilemma for the couple. Ray Milland also stars as a friend of the couple who also falls in love with Margaret Sullavan. As the couple drifts apart, they start to contemplate divorce. Jimmy's character develops a serious respiratory infection from being overseas and realizes that he doesn't want to be a burden to his wife. He encourages her to marry his friend and to break off with him in a move of self sacrifice. However, they both still are in love with each other and she stays with him after finding out about his condition. The two of them never forgot about their past experiences with each other and as one character in the movie had stated that they shared a special type of love with each other. The movie title is suitably named since it relates to delaying a relationship until a later time period. The couple's competing career aspirations resulted in a delaying of spending time to share love with each other. The movie spans the time period from 1927 to 1935 and opens and concludes at a hotel where the couple had spent time together. Jimmy mentions the Lindbergh transatlantic flight at the beginning of the movie. It is a coincidence that he would play Charles Lindbergh later in his movie career. There are also references to the turmoil developing in Europe and the Japanese invasion into Asia which forbodes World War II.

******************SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT*********************** This is a surprisingly excellent little film from Universal starring Margaret Sullavan and Jimmy Stewart. The two leads play a young married couple whose careers end up keeping them apart throughout most of their marriage despite the fact that they have a child together whom Sullavan's character ends up raising pretty much on her own. The film was released in 1936 and shows the clear influence of the first wave of the modern feminist movement in the U.S.. Sullavan is a successful actress who supports and even helps facilitate her husband Stewart's career as a globe-trotting foreign correspondent, but she doesn't sacrifice her own career to the usual trope of the "good little wife" following wherever he goes. The choices and hard decisions of each of the partners in this marriage are portrayed mostly realistically (until the unnecessarily melodramatic ending, that is), and the film doesn't pull any punches about how difficult it is for both Sullavan and Stewart, who are genuinely in love, to pursue what's best for each of them individually, even at the expense of their happiness and their opportunities to live together in the marriage. The movie takes a sophisticated attitude toward the challenges of a two-career couple in a way that was fairly ahead of its time. It doesn't pander to the usual Hollywood formula and there's certainly not a happy ending. Both Stewart's and Sullavan's characters suffer and experience regrets, but there's no disproportionate punishment for the woman character for choosing her own independence and career. These two actors clearly portray the couple as spouses who are determined to respect one another's choices even when they're hurt by them. They also clearly maintain their love for each other even through the years of separation. But in the final analysis, their choices mean they don't get to have one another present in their everyday lives in the way I think that each of them would ultimately have wanted for their marriage. Sullavan and Stewart are terrific in playing off one another and they each bring great credibility and feeling to their scenes together. Ray Milland also gives a strong performance in an important supporting role. See this far too-little known 1936 gem. If you're a fan of the golden age of classic films and of these two fine actors at a relatively young stage of their respective careers, you won't spend a more interesting hour and a half at the movies. Highly recommended.

Among all of Jimmy Stewart's films, "Next Time We Love" is among the more obscure...even though there is some really terrific acting in it as well as three top actors (Margaret Sullavan, Jimmy Stewart and Ray Milland). As far as why it's not a popular film, I have a strong guess....it's not a particularly enjoyable picture and you have a hard time really caring about the characters. The story itself is a great illustration of the old saying, "Act in haste, repent at leisure". This is because Cicely and Chris (Sullavan and Stewart) meet and decide to get married only a few days later. It's clearly an impulsive move and even before the honeymoon it's clear this will NOT be an easy marriage. Chris is a newspaper correspondent and likes the idea of traveling the world to report the news. This is clearly NOT a career conducive to a great marriage. But to make it worse, Cicely soon takes up acting and she likes it...and it pays well. In fact, when Chris loses a job, she carries them. This SHOULD make them happy but it doesn't. After all, it's the 1930s and a man, a 'real man', was expected to be the bread-winner and a wife was to stay home, make babies and wait for her man to come home from work--which was impossible with being a correspondent and her being an actress. So, years pass and Chris roams the world while Cicely becomes famous...and they barely have any time for each other. Both have created their own separate lives...and all the while, their good friend Tommy (Milland) is there to help Cicely...and soon it becomes apparent Tommy wants to be more than just a friend. So basically you have two strong-willed people who are more concerned with their careers than each other...something hardly the stuff of a romance or fun film. In many ways, I wonder how much this story was influenced by the Hollywood life...and broken marriages. Either way, the acting is stupendous (particularly by Sullavan)...but the film is still unpleasant and not particularly involving for me. As for me, I just wanted to slap them both and tell them to grow up! After all, they had a child and yet they seemed a bit childish themselves.

There's no doubt in your mind that when pretty schoolteacher Margaret Sullavan gets on a train and off again that she's soon to become reporter James Stewart's bride. He's a rising star on his paper, and when they first settle down, everything is fine. But she's bitten by the acting bug thanks to their movie actor pal (Ray Milland) and ends up becoming a hit on the stage. He's sent to Rome and she decides to remain behind. But when the news hits that she's had a baby, he comes rushing home and looses his job. By this time, they are practically strangers, even though they are new parents. Sullavan intervenes on Stewart's behalf in his career, and this leads to situations which threaten to separate them even more. This is a likable drama that suffers from a lack of light-hearted moments to retain consistent interest. One moment stands out when Stewart visits Sullavan backstage just as she is about to go on. He doesn't understand the bad timing and keeps talking to her in a distractive way just as she is about to make her entrance. It is one of those oh-so-uncomfortable moments to watch (because you can just imagine it happening) that makes his character annoying, but real. It is at this moment that you realize that these two may be in love but have nothing really in common, and you wonder, "How can this love survive?" Obvious other than the lack of humor is the lack of familiar character performers. Of the rather small cast, only Grant Mitchell is recognizable, the others very obscure, mostly from bit parts in other films but given larger ones here. Anna Demetrio, as the big-hearted Italian landlady, stands out amongst them. This is the type of film that I really wanted to like a lot more but just couldn't feel emotion for. The team of Stewart and Sullavan would do a lot better in their two 1940 MGM releases together, "The Mortal Storm" and "The Shop Around the Corner".

By the time her fifth film was ready to be launched Margaret Sullavan had achieved a position of some clout with her original studio Universal Pictures. She used that clout to get as her leading man, a young player she knew from Broadway as the best friend of her then husband Henry Fonda. Sullavan got Carl Laemmle to get Louis B. Mayer to loan him James Stewart and from Paramount as the second lead she got Ray Milland. But Stewart was her project and she more than director Edward Griffith got him through Next Time We Love to favorable notices. This was Stewart's highest billing yet, co-starring to Margaret Sullavan and he made the most of it. They did three more films together and in only one of them did either Sullavan or Stewart not die in. They were the king and queen of bittersweet romances back in the day. Sullavan is highly successful stage star and Stewart is a reporter with ambitions to be an international correspondent. Sullavan might have been better off marrying Ray Milland who is a producer, but something about the shy and stammering Jimmy wins her heart and that would be the first in a long line of female hearts on the screen to feel that way. Of course being an international correspondent does keep Stewart away a lot and Margaret does not want to give up a successful stage career that's just getting started. Even with the arrival of a baby boy the problems only increase until a really heavy crisis comes on that overwhelms all. Next Time We Love is an intelligent mature drama that holds up well and I'm surprised has not been remade. I could see a Cate Blanchett or a Gwyneth Paltrow in Sullavan's role with possibly Matthew McConaughey in the Stewart part in a remake today. Somebody in Hollywood take note.