moonspinner55 Review of I'll Be Seeing You

I'll Be Seeing You (1944)

Hoary, ridiculously contrived and miscast star-vehicle...

[4/10 · 31 December 2015]

Ginger Rogers looks a little mature to be a single gal still holding onto her virtue; here, as a convicted felon out on a furlough for the Christmas holiday, the actress is supposed to be wistful and vulnerable, but she appears seasoned. Framed in flashback (which certainly doesn't help matters), Rogers is revealed to have killed her boss by accident--a wolf on the make, he was standing too close to an open window--but her story apparently didn't wash in court as she was packed off to the pokey. As a sergeant also on leave, Joseph Cotten has his own problems (deep-seated, it appears), but there's nothing much else to this plot beyond the obvious: when will he find out she's a jailbird? As Rogers' cousin, Shirley Temple is almost as miscast as Ginger; groomed and trained to always give her all, Temple's impersonation of a 'typical' American teenager is a little bit frightening (casual, flip talk doesn't come easily to Shirley, she's too eager to punch her scenes across). An old-fashioned weepie in the worst sense, the movie is cobwebby with clichés and contrivances that should have smart viewers saying "I'll be seeing you" long before the end credits. ** from ****