I'll Wait for You (1941)

I’ll Wait for You (1941)

Directed by Robert B. Sinclair

Screenplay by Guy Trosper

Runtime: 1 hr, 13 min

Most of the movies that I end up reviewing have pedigree of some sort.  Maybe they have a star-studded cast, well known sequences, or a big-name directed.  Hell, a few have been notable for just how catastrophic they were.  At the very least, almost all of them have a page devoted to them on Wikipedia.  But then there are the films that time seems to have forgotten, the footnotes to cinematic history.  Usually this is for good reason, but venturing into this morass of the forgotten can yield surprisingly pleasant results, such as I’ll Wait for You.

A remake of the 1934 film Hide Out, the film centers on racketeer Lucky Wilson (Robert Sterling).  He’s a smooth talker and ladies man who is on the run from the authorities, led by Lieutenant McFarley (Paul Kelly).  Lucky gets shot in process and takes shelter on a Connecticut farm owned by the Miller family.  He immediately takes a shine to the farmers’ older daughter, Pauline (Marsha Hunt), and it becomes clear that the feelings are mutual.  The question is whether Lucky can reconcile his new environs with his slick living lifestyle.

There are a lot of elements in I’ll Wait for You that are very rote and obvious (not the least of which is the ending, thanks to the title).  You have the standard fish out of water story early on, as Lucky, a lifelong New Yorker who’s never been north of Yankee Stadium, must cope with life on the farm.  You have the racketeer background, which of course focuses on nightclubs and laundries used as fronts.  And you have the romantic bond built as a woman nurses a man back to health.  In short, this movie would not recognize Originality if it sat in its lap.

Yet this is not necessarily a problem.  A formulaic film can still be done well, and while I’ll Wait for You is far from spectacular, it is enjoyable.  For one thing, the formulaic elements are not all that painful to swallow.  What bothers Lucky most about farm life is not the lack of anything to do or the cultural values, but rather all the animals that never stop squawking.  It actually communicates his relation to his surrounding very well: whereas he doesn’t notice the sound of traffic, he does notice every different bird that chirps the night away.

In addition, it would be a bit too easy to paint the Miller family as either antagonistic to city-slicker Lucky or as purveyor of infinite, commonsense wisdom.  They’re just colorful folks.  The father (Henry Travers) is a well-intentioned but lacks any sort of verbal filter and loves to spin yarns, while his wife (Fay Holden) is caring to the point of smothering.  Their younger daughter Lizzie (Virginia Weidler), meanwhile, is kind of bratty is but clearly in love with life and her rabbits.  They bring some texture to this universe and serve as more than mere window-dressing.

That said, what gets the film over its rote screenplay is the strength of the lead performances.  Sterling shows a wide range of modes throughout the film: seductive, sincere, confused and cocksure.  He shines best when his character faces an emotional state which is new to him: legitimate, honest to goodness love.  Considering that his previous relationships to women have been shallow, it would makes sense for his character to react strangely, even violently to the fact that he’s now experiences mature love, that he might enter a mature relationship.

Marsha Hunt is no slouch, either.  True, Pauline as a character seems a bit too ideal as a lover, which makes her seem less than human.  But Hunt brings a dimension to the character which the screenplay does not.  When Pauline reveals that she has been in love with Lucky from the moment she first laid eyes on him, Hunt’s body language presents the possibility that this is not in fact true, that she is rationalizing her emotions at the moment, in response to Lucky declaration of love and less than subtle advances.

Even if the love between the two leads is a little hard to swallow—at least on Pauline’s end—it is difficult not to root for them.  I’m not sure this is entirely a good thing, considering that Lucky is still a crook and that seems to have a violent streak to him when he gets flustered.  It’s the sort of relationship which seems destined for a crash and burn at some point.  This makes the movie’s bittersweet ending appropriate, but I think that the presentation of the resolution is a bit too optimistic.  I somehow doubt that Lucky and Pauline is the romantic couple of our time.

Nevertheless, I’ll Wait for You proves to be a rather sweet story with potentially dark undertones.  Granted, a more daring or original film probably would have explored those lurking concerns, and that’s the sort of film that I would have preferred.  But that’s not the story that the film wanted to tell.  The filmmakers wanted to make a simple story of burgeoning love cut short too soon, and on that front they succeeded.  At less than an hour an half, it’s not a major time investment, and either way it’s inoffensive.  You could do a lot worse, is what I’m saying.