Соғыс кезіндегі жаңа өмірлер Соғыс сыны тартқан жандар

1945 British drama film

Perfect Strangers (United States title: Vacation from Marriage), is a 1945 British drama film made by London Films. It stars Robert Donat and Deborah Kerr as a married couple whose relationship is shaken by their service in the Second World War. The supporting cast includes Glynis Johns, Ann Todd and Roland Culver. It was produced and directed by Alexander Korda from a screenplay by Clemence Dane and Anthony Pelissier based on a story by Clemence Dane. Dane won the Academy Award for Best Story. The music score was by Clifton Parker and the cinematography by Georges Périnal.

Robert and Cathy Wilson are a timid married couple in 1940 London. He is a bookkeeper, she a bored housewife. However, their tedious lives are changed by the war. He enlists in the Royal Navy, and she joins the Women's Royal Naval Service. During the three years the couple are apart (their shore leaves never coincide), they are transformed, each becoming much more self confident. Dizzy Clayton, Cathy's assertive new friend, helps her break out of her shell. She begins going out with Dizzy's cousin, naval architect Richard, who falls in love with her. However, she remains unenthusiastically faithful to her husband. Meanwhile, Robert becomes tougher on sea duty, and in time, he becomes a petty officer. His hands are badly burned when his ship is sunk, but he stoically rows in the lifeboat for five days without complaint. He recuperates in a hospital, tended by Elena, a beautiful nurse. On the last night of his stay, he asks her out to dinner. He is attracted to her, but she informs him that she lost her beloved husband only six months earlier, kisses him, and leaves. Robert and Cathy both receive 10 day leaves, but each dreads being reunited with the dowdy spouse each remembers and being forced back into the dreary life they shared. Cathy cannot bring herself to return to her flat, where Robert is waiting. Instead, she phones Robert, asking him to talk with her on more neutral ground and blurting that she wants to leave him. He is furious. They meet on the street in the pitch dark of the blackout. To her surprise, Robert readily agrees to a divorce, telling her that he was going to ask her for one. They go to the neighbourhood pub to discuss the divorce, and for the first time in three years, they see the transformation in the other. Throughout the film, they have been talking to their new friends about their life together, and now they revisit those issues and talk honestly to each other about the past. They find that if they are "perfect strangers" now. For Cathy, the hated view from their flat, all walls and smoking chimneys, is a symbol of their lives before the war. They dance with each other for the first time, and they clearly are attracted. Dizzy and Robert's friend Scotty meet them in the pub. Both are stunned. Dizzy thinks Cathy is crazy. Scotty calls Cathy a pin up, but the compliment goes wrong when he shares Robert's unflattering descriptions of the 'old' Cathy. She is insulted and furious. It hardens her heart, and she leaves as the pub closes. Outside, waiting in vain for a taxi in the bombed out intersection, the argument continues—they even fight over where the shops were formerly located. In the end, Scotty goes to his billet, leaving Robert on the street. The girls go to the flat, where Cathy wistfully tells Dizzy about how she and Robert met. Robert returns to retrieve his gear and finds Cathy sitting in the corner of the windowseat. The sky is bright with early morning light, and beyond the shattered houses, the vista toward the river is broken only by a church steeple. The high walls and smoking chimneys are gone. Robert opens the window, letting in the sounds of the city. A clock strikes 5. He turns to look at Cathy, saying “Well, you've certainly got the view you always wanted.”

“Miles and miles of it,” she replies. “But oh Robert, the desolation.”

“Poor old London,” he says, looking out the window. “Well, we'll just have to build it up again. That's all.”

“It will take years and years,” Cathy says, her eyes on him. He reaches out to put his hand on hers, and then turns toward her, saying “Well, what does that matter? We're young.” Cathy lifts her head to meet him, and they embrace passionately.

Perfect Strangers was a commercial success in both the UK and the US, where it was re titled Vacation from Marriage. ranked 22nd according to Kinematograph Weekly.

In the New York Times , Bosley Crowther wrote the script was an intelligent treatment of "the simple and leisurely story" and the leading actors "excellent as the principals, who find that love, like devastated London, can be rebuilt". He wrote that Korda's direction "tells an oft told tale but tells it easily and well".

Clemence Dane won an Academy Award for Best Original Motion Picture Story for Perfect Strangers.