It had been a while since I last saw a movie with an overture and an entr'acte. This one has the courtesy to change the stills during the overture, the entr'acte being shorter. Alas, the soundtrack, tho Oscar-winning, is far from Lawrence of Arabia, so I opted to skip.
We never meet the "you" of the title: Tim Hilton, a U.S. Army volunteer, leaves his unidentified Midwestern town for war right before the first scene. His wife, Anne (Claudette Colbert), rents out a room to retired Col. Smollett (Monty Woolley) to make ends meet. Their elder daughter, Jane (Jennifer Jones), falls for the colonel's visiting yet half-estranged grandson, Bill (Robert Walker), knowing that he as a corporal may have to leave soon as well. She and sister Brig (Shirley Temple) do their own parts to contribute to the war effort on U.S. soil. From time to time, Anne's ex-boyfriend, naval lieutenant Tony (Joseph Cotten), shows up with a familial atmosphere, to the consternation of the maid, Fidelia (Hattie McDaniel).
I have to wonder whether Temple was supposed to be playing a much younger girl. She was 16 at the time, but so was Judy Garland several years earlier in The Wizard of Oz, and I'd never have guessed it from her behavior. One reason for my suspicion is Brig's immature friend, Gladys, who keeps running and hiding from adults and barely says a word other than "Psst."
Apart from Gladys, the only significant source of what little levity this film offers is the colonel, who's quite the blunt sourpuss, perhaps channeling Woolley's lead in The Man Who Came to Dinner. More than half his dialog amounts to complaints, not least when the Hiltons' bulldog, the oddly named Soda, gets mysteriously attached to him. But at no point is he as obnoxious as neighbor Emily Hawkins (Agnes Moorehead), one of those types who boast and insult so frequently and with such a pseudo-friendly air that you wonder if they even notice. Anyway, the colonel does get involved in some of the most serious moments, which contribute to him letting up over time.
Exactly how much time is that? My best guess is several months. Long enough for the girls to feel like they've grown up a bit in their father's absence, but short enough that they don't look any different.
I'll tell you one thing: It certainly feels long. Even before reaching the intermission, I was losing patience. No way would I watch the whole 172 minutes in one evening. And lest you think me just emblematic of a less patient generation, contemporary critics had the same problem with it.
I blame this partly on the desire for credibility. From one perspective, there's a lot going on; from another, there's very little going on. I get that the story comes from a book, which almost certainly means that a lot got cut, but I would've cut many more of the moments that didn't really advance anything (see Gladys above). Realism also can increase predictability, tho that's also on some adherence to cinematic formula.
You may notice the "politically incorrect" label I added. That doesn't apply to Fidelia as much as you'd think. The worst that can be said for her is that she uses some grammar that the Hiltons wouldn't; Anne parrots that grammar at one point, but it doesn't come across as overt mockery. Apart from that, she holds her own in both intelligence and virtue, and she and the Hiltons are so fond of each other that they practically interact as equals. None of the visitors treat her badly either. The worst racism we get has nothing to do with her: a line about killing "Japs."
Perhaps a better reason for the PI tag is how dated the gender values in evidence are. Anne never really considers getting a job to sustain the family -- believing that she has no applicable skills -- until after she realizes how much her daughters have done compared to her. She does always want them to go to college, but neither of them is eager for it. There is a now-strange stigma against women having tenants in their homes, military or otherwise. And Jane gets crushes on men in uniform far too easily. Still, I can believe that such were the times.
The trailer for SYWA billed it almost as the next Gone with the Wind. Well, it is better in some ways, but it's also harder to recommend. In focusing so heavily on the understandable traumas of a soldier's family, despite (or maybe partly because of) the actors' strong performances, it imparts a sort of emotional fatigue. See it only if you have a lot of confidence in your patience.
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