Colonel Michael Wentworth (Michael Redgrave) goes to war and is reported dead after some time. His wife refuses to accept that he is dead and is slowly but definitely breaking up especially psychologically, so she is persuaded to do something about her situation and take her husband's seat in parliament, although she knows nothing about politics. However, she grows into the profession and even becomes popular, and so four years pass, and after this eternity of a bloody war the husband suddenly comes home without warning. He has been a prisoner of war and has had no possibility to communicate about his surviving his own death. Then the problems begin.
Michael Redgrave and Valerie Hobson are always worth watching, and this is even a story by Daphne du Maurier, who wrote only good stories (like "Rebecca"). So the film is interesting indeed but totally without drama, it's like a domestic play about difficulties of relationships because of the war, another man coming home from the war having lost his leg in it and doesn't want to continue with his wife any more because of that, and other things like that. It's all right as a time document, anticipating the problems resulting from the peace, problems that no one had expected and that suddenly come importuning, causing new conflicts where there were none. Good play, good direction, good music, but merely an insight just passing by.
Review of The Years Between
