Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Captivating movie !

A Masterpiece!

This Korda film is a fairly good comedy that won an Oscar for Best Original Story. It starts out a little slow and the ending is fairly predictable; however, it is loaded with some of the best British film actors of that time and the story's process is full of humor and very good touches.As the film opens, we see the picture of a boring, routine marriage. Robert Wilson (Robert Donat) has worked as clerk in a large office for 5 years (minus 8 weeks). It is 1940 and Bob has just been drafted into the British Royal Navy for the duration of the war. For all men working for FIVE YEARS OR MORE, it's the company policy to hold their jobs and continue their pay level by making up the difference between what they allow them to collect (during the war) and what the military pays them. Bob is hopeful that his 4 years and 44 weeks with the company will make him a five-year man. It doesn't. He loses both his company's job security and its partial pay supplement.After this wimpy man climbs breathlessly up the stairs to his London flat, he tells his mousy wife, Catherine (Deborah Kerr). She merely shrugs it off with a sneeze and sniff from her perpetual cold. Bob reports to the navy training camp and starts writing Cathy. She soon joins the WRENs (the British version of the WAVES), and they both dutifully write each other. As time passes they both become more competent people, leading more exciting lives in the service than they ever had during their marriage at home. Gradually, their letter writing starts to wane and their positive memories of each other start to fade; their memories become stuck on each other's most negative attributes.While in the service, Cathy commanding officer, Dizzy (Glynis Johns), introduces her to her cousin, Richard (Roland Culver). She becomes infatuated with this worldly man who paints her portrait and teaches her to dance.Both Bob and Cathy do some semi-heroic things in the service, building their confidence in themselves. After Bob's hands are burned while in action, he hospitalized to recuperate with his new Scottish buddy, Scotty (Edward Rigby). While there, he falls briefly in love with his recently-widowed nurse, Elena (Ann Todd). Her role is similar to that that Richard has with Cathy: passing flings that make them feel good about themselves.After three and half years of service, they both get leaves to return home--at the same time!!. However, neither is too anxious to see the other. When they take their leaves, each brings along their new service buddies: Cathy brings Dizzy and Bob brings Scotty. Of course, they have to get reacquainted, review their past views of each other, and introduce their new selves to each other. Though the outcome of the film is fairly obvious, the process of the renewed romance between the two 'new' people is entertaining, with some fireworks and protestations about each other's memories of their 'former' marriage.

This is a film on an often unexplored aspect of World War II - how couples grew apart after years of separation due to the service of one or both in the military. What makes this film so unusual is that it is exploring the topic - albeit in a rather light hearted and humorous fashion - at the very end of the war rather than a few years later.In this case the couple (Deborah Kerr as Catherine Wilson and Robert Donat as Robert Wilson) really don't grow apart as a couple as much as they grow as individuals. They are both mousy plain almost invisible people prior to the war, seemingly happy in their routine. Then in the spring of 1940 Robert enters the British navy and Catherine enters the British equivalent of the WAVEs - the WRENs. There they are both tested, find their courage and their voice, and find the attention of and feel attraction to members of the opposite sex, all the while with each remembering the other as they were before the war and feeling somewhat disappointed at the idea of resuming their mousy existences - and marriage - after the war.Then comes what should be a happy event - after three years apart both are granted a ten days leave - time enough to reunite and get to know each other again ... or not. I'll let you see what happens as they both return to their prewar flat with all the enthusiasm of the condemned to their execution.Everything in this production is outstanding - cinematography, makeup, and of course stellar jobs by the entire cast. I would have never thought Deborah Kerr and Robert Donat could ever have generated any chemistry together, but the proof is in the pudding. I highly recommend it.

The English title, "Perfect Strangers," was changed to "Vacation From Marriage" for its USA distribution. It's amazing that it ever was finished. Aside from a good deal of trouble concerning the script, it was filmed in 1944 when there was a shortage of sets and equipment and everything else in England except myriad Buzz Bombs.The story had been done before. Two stodgy spouses undergo some sort of traumatic experience and find their marriage improved as a result. Here, the spouses are the stuffy and boring Robert Donat ("The Thirty Nine Steps") and the whimpering hypochondriacal Deborah Kerr. The traumatic event is a three-year separation for war service -- he in the Navy and she a Wren.During the separation they change by force of circumstances. Donat shaves his mustache and has a fling with a blond. Kerr, under the guidance of the fey Glynis Johns, has her hair redone and acquires self confidence. When they are brought back to England to spend their leave together, each liberated spouse still carries the image of the stultifying other. They didn't even kiss good-bye at their departure. Kerr, afraid to enter their apartment, calls him hysterically and demands a divorce. They meet at a nearby pub, The Coach and Horses, and each is surprised but wary at the change in the other. They flirt, quarrel, part, and make up. It ends happily with an embrace in front of the window of their flat, overlooking a blitzed London overhung with barrage balloons, a fresh new morning.It's all very well done. There aren't any belly laughs but a viewer may be forgiven for smiles of recognition at the minor ironies of life that are on full display here.Donat is his smooth self. Kerr is winsome and girlish, slightly wall eyed, her voice slightly quivering, and completely winning, so innocent in appearance and demeanor that it would be obscene to think of her legs. I couldn't help it so I did it anyway.You'll probably enjoy this. The script isn't high flown. This isn't Shakespeare; it's everyday life. But all the characters are precise and somewhat elegant in their speech. The Brits always sound a little more elegant than the rest of us.

The first two thirds of this movie are perfect! The remaking of Robert and Catherine is depicted in the subtle way I wanted it done. And the mirroring of their war experiences worked very well. At the same points in the movie they were made over, they were heroes, they were attracted to other people. It was utterly predictable, but surprise wasn't the point. The point was to tease out their reunion into a deliciously excruciating wait, and that worked. I was right there for it the whole time—and then they botched the ending. Instead of taking pains with the nuances of the couple's becoming interested in each other again—which could have been achingly romantic—we get a short cut: a dumb marital squabble that is out of character with their new war-forged maturity. Ah well. It was really close.