There's Always Tomorrow (1956)

Director Douglas Sirk tends to inspire mixed reactions from viewers. Many hail him as a visionary who used the gloss and surface texture of 1950s melodrama to create a surprisingly personal vision, while others find his films treacly, sudsy, and manipulative. There's Always Tomorrow won't change anyone's opinion of the director; it's typical Sirk, although shot stunningly in black-and-white rather than in the gorgeous color usually associated with him. (It doesn't make a difference; Russell Metty's cinematography is still stunning, playing with shadows and light to marvelous effect and indulging Sirk's fondness for windows and doors.) The story is pure melodrama, but it does provide an interestingly subversive look into the sorrow and desperation beneath the happy surface of Middle America in the 1950s. The quiet death that Fred MacMurray's character is actually quite affecting, and had the studio let Sirk keep his original ending -- in which the robot toy that is a symbol for MacMurray's manipulated life falls off a table and kicks helplessly on the floor -- the film might have packed an even greater punch. MacMurray does very fine work here, movingly portraying a good husband and father whose family is slowly strangling the life out of him, and Barbara Stanwyck hits all the right notes as the woman who could save him. Tomorrow doesn't hit the heights of prime Sirk like Magnificent Obsession, due to the familiarity and predictability of its screenplay, but it's a good little wallow for regular viewers and a treat for Sirk aficionados. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide