Movie goers who are certain they don’t make ’em like that any more, like me, often find themselves wishing for 1946 again. The Big Sleep, Razor’s Edge, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Gilda. Those were some of 1946’s bigger box office pay days. Oh yes, there was that big box office flop, It’s a Wonderful Life.
Oh to relive 1946. That’s just what Sheila Page played by Joan Leslie gets to do in 1947’s Repeat Performance. In a heavily reworked version of the 1942 William O’Farrell novel, Sheila gets to relive 1946 from New Years Eve to New Years Eve. Well people had been reliving past cinematic lives for a while, particularly around the holidays, the previous year’s Capra classic being just the latest. Ah, but this one had a twist. Sheila doesn’t just watch her past life like Ebenezer Scrooge or George Bailey. Nor does she dream or imagine what a do over might get her the second time around. She gets dropped right back into her previous year with the full knowledge of the happenings of her first go at it and her plan for rewriting the script.
Surely you’ve said to yourself a time or two “if I could only do that again” or “I wish I could have that day back.” Without revealing any more of the tale if you should want to see it for yourself* you probably can figure out that things aren’t going to go as planned. Obviously she didn’t live her first shot at 1946 in a vacuum and she isn’t going through version 2 alone. That’s the trouble with wishing for a redo, everyone else comes along too. Whether you want them or not. And there’s no guarantee that even if you could do your part differently that with everybody else adjusting and refining the end result won’t be the same.
My 2019 was not a banner year for me. If you’ve been reading these posts for a while you know that. If you are new just read the last posted kidney transplant update and you’ll get an idea of what I did on my summer vacation and it didn’t involve Disneyland. So if I had a chance to repeat this year would I leap at it?
I think I’ll take a crack at revising things in the new year. In fact, I wouldn’t mind if we could dispense with today and tomorrow. I’ve already had enough of 2019.
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*The 1947 movie Repeat Performance was lost until very recently. There are plans for a DVD and BluRay release. It is currently available in Turner Classic Movie’s on demand listings. There is a newer movie of the same name from 1996 that was a completely different story, perhaps even more obscure that the one lost for 70 years. Don’t be fooled by that. In 1989 NBC released a remake of the 1947 film as the made for TV movie Turn Back the Clock starring Connie Sellecca in the Sheila Page role as Stephanie Powers. That movie should not be confused with the 1933 comedy offering Turn Back the Clock which involves people reliving past lives but they were having a lot more fun than those that came in William O’Farrell’s novel released 9 years later which became the source material for the 1947 and 1989 movies. And you wondered why I wouldn’t want to redo a year. They can’t even get redoing movies right and that stuff is made up!
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Happy New Year, buddy. May 2020 be bigger, better and beautiful for you and yours.
And back to you and yours. I’ll get 2020 a few hours before you. If I suspect anything I’ll send word!