NR | 1h 48min | Drama | 1956
Ben Hecht’s romance drama draws on his novel about the enduring power of love, faith, and hope. He paints a portrait of the heroism and fragility of the human condition on a canvas he loves: the city of his birth, New York.
Exuberant GI Art Hugenon (Van Johnson) waiting to be called to World War II duty, falls for dowdy, demure company secretary Ruth Wood (Jane Wyman). Ruth inherits her mistrust of men from her aging mother, Agnes (Josephine Hutchinson), whose musician-composer husband Harry (William Gargan) went AWOL when Ruth was little. Agnes hopes for a miracle: Harry will return. Ruth hasn’t that hope. Smiling, Art tells Ruth that she’s mistaken.
Ruth finds Art’s effervescence irresistible, buying an antique Roman coin at an auction on impulse, and gifting it to him. Unknown to both, remorseful Harry, now playing music at diners, longs to return to his wife and daughter. Spotting Ruth from afar, and later hearing his long-discarded melody on the radio (Art helped pen lyrics and publicized it), Harry plots that return, held back by self-loathing.
Friend and colleague Grace Ullman (Eileen Heckart) cheers Ruth’s blossoming romance. When Art heads to war, he vows to return and marry Ruth. Delighted, she writes him daily. But when he’s killed, she is devastated and withdraws into herself. Grace figures that faith may heal that wound; perhaps frequenting a nearby cathedral may draw her out from being stuck in the past.
Ruth recognizes worth in an otherwise worthless coin, just as Art recognizes someone unique in an otherwise plain Ruth. For all its ordinariness, there’s something special about this pairing of actors; Wyman outlives Johnson on screen as he outlived her off it. Born a year before Wyman, he died a year after she did.
Rain or Sunshine
This expectant generosity floods Hecht’s New York, not just when hearts overflow with joy, but even when they don’t.Grace loves New York so much she brims with the city’s trivia, but she won’t go to a movie without Ruth because “it’s more fun seeing it with somebody.” When Ruth is captivated by the melancholic statue of St. Andrew in the cathedral, she learns that he was noted for his “self-effacement” and “generosity.” As a grieving Ruth lies prone with fever, neighbor Mrs. Hamer (Irene Seidner) tut-tuts: “Terrible thing, sickness.” But Agnes, used to Ruth fussing over her, is grateful that she’s able to return her daughter’s kindness by being at her side.
The film juxtaposes apparently unanswered prayers against the relative ignorance of fragile humans, who see too little, hear even less, and, therefore, need hope and faith in equal measure during life’s metaphorical cloudbursts.
Hecht is saying that sometimes it’s unclear if a wish is merely delayed, or granted, but differently. Ruth thinks Art didn’t bother replying to her letters; his death means he hasn’t even read them. She thinks Harry won’t reconnect; in fact, each year he’d been away he’d pick up a phone to call or a pen to write but, wracked by guilt, never followed through. Next to a distraught Agnes, Mrs. Hamer prays for a feverish Ruth who’s gone missing, “O Lord, ... don’t let the lousy rain hurt her.”
But, as we discover, the rain isn’t “lousy” any more than the sunshine, or the park, or the people are. To Ruth, everything and everyone that seemed hostile before she met Art, becomes endearing the moment love arrives, like a chilly downpour on a scorching day. Naturally, it all appears hostile again when love leaves. To Agnes, life itself seemed pointless without Harry, which is why she’d once tried suicide.
Hecht is saying that it’s love that gives everything else beauty, even treasured relationships that appear too short lived. Art tells Ruth he likes the rain, and says he’s “going to like it more than ever, for introducing us.”
