Thanks for the memories!

Excellent but underrated film

A different way of telling a story

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

I voted 5/10 for this film as the only bit I enjoyed was listening to Maria Ouspenskaya singing a line in Russian of "Jingle Bells".Hollywood producers had an annoying tendency in the 1940s to produce too syrupy & sentimental movies and this one is no exception.Even some of your critical American users above are of this point of view.I know the USA is largely a Christian country but why bring this doctrinal assumption into the screenplay where the possible hereafter is concerned? To a 2013 audience the filmed screenplay seems very naive.The producers should have read Shakespeare's Hamlet who says in his famous soliloquy, "...the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns, puzzles the will and makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of".So they should have left the subliminal question open which no living man can answer.

I really wanted to see Maria Oupenskaya, a Russian American actress, who trained Ruth White among others. Tragically she died in a fire. This film is the first I was able to see. Back in the studio system days, films like this were done quickly and more efficiently. If anything, the quality of writing isn't great. Still the cast do a terrific job with the script. The Christmas dinner and party was delightful to watch. The tragic loss of the three elderly wealthy men who return as spirits who guide the young honest couple back to each other. The film might have quality issues with the DVD. Still the film is worth seeing at least once and should be aired around the Christmas holidays.

Charming if odd fantasy quasi holiday film. For something supposedly designed to be heartwarming there are an awful lot of dark edges to this film. What it does have going for it is three terrific actors, C. Aubrey Smith, Harry Carey and Charles Winninger front and center in the sort of spotlight roles that character actors were afforded back then in B movies of this type. The general story is hokum but played with an infectious twinkle in the eye by the three gentlemen and earnestness by the two young leads. Keep in mine while watching this is a low budget affair because any special effects used are rudimentary at best but it still takes you along thanks to the skillful performances of the players.

***SPOILERS*** Sentimental little Christmas movie involving three life long friends who in trying to pep up their somewhat lonely Christmas Eve get together in roping in two young strangers who make their holiday season a lot better and far more rewarding. So much better that they just refuse to go back to their maker, and heaven, after they ended up dying in a tragic plane crash.The three old guys Irish Michael O'Brien, Charles Winninger, British Allan "Chad" Chadwick, A.Aubrey Smith, and American businessman George Melton, Harry Carey,end up bonding with their unexpected Christmas guests Texas cowboy James Huston,Richard Carlson, and children clinic volunteer Jean Lawrence, Jean Parker, who end up becoming their lifelong,and even beyond life, friends.Becoming almost inseparable both James and Jean drift apart when their three old benefactors, with Michael leaving James a cache of money to continue his fledging singing career, unexpectedly perish in a plane crash. Being stung by success, as the new American Idol, James gets hooked up with Broadway singing sensation Arlene Terry,Helen Vinson, who's just nuts about the handsome but shy Texas cowboy. This has Michael, who's stuck in the world between life and death, try to somehow show the love sick James what a mistake he made in tossing his one and only true love, on earth and beyond, Jean away for the manipulated and scheming Arlene. Both Chad and George also hang out in what seems to be the Astral World, an existence between life and death,for a short time until they finally get their bearings straight and ascend to heaver. Chad ends up going to heaven with his dead son David, William Bakewell, who was killed in the Great War or WWI. The cranky and penny pinching George finally found out, after his death, that money isn't everything if your in a place, the world in between life and death, where its not worth the paper that it's printed on and also sees the light, heaven, by the time the film is over.Only Michael gets involved with the world of the living in his attempt to save James from a fate worse then death in both losing Jean as well as his life by getting himself involved with Arlene. James in fact does see the light after he's shot and killed by Arlene's drunk and jealous ex-husband-Mr. Terry I presume-and is given a second chance to return back to earth, and life, to reunite with the girl that he left behind Jean.Nothing really new here even though the movie predates the far more popular and very similar Frank Capra Christmas Classic "It's a Wonderful Life" by some six years. The film "Beyond Tomorrow" nevertheless still packs quite a wallop in movies about life after death and what it's, our very meager existence, really all about in the grand scheme of things.There's also in the film the two Czarist Russian survivors of the Commnist Revolution Madame Tanya, Maria Ouspenskay, who's the only one in the movie who can see or sense the three dead plane crash victims and her stuffy and stoned faced butler Josef, Alex Melesh. It's Josef who at times when his face was frozen stiff looked like the newest member, even though he never was a US President, of Mount Rushmore.