I’ll Never Forget You (a.k.a. The House in the Square; a.k.a. Man of Two Worlds) (1951)

Directed by Roy Baker; produced by Sol C Siegel

An atomic physicist (Tyrone Power) needs time off from his work. Dissatisfied with life in the mid-twentieth century, he would like nothing more than to have lived two hundred years before. One day, he gets his wish. Through unknown means, he travels back to the past, to the very era of which he is enamoured - but finds all is not what he expected.

This movie is an adaptation of the play Berkeley Square, which had been previously (1933) made into a film of the same name, starring Leslie Howard. I cannot comment on the stage version (nor on the first movie), but I found the 1951 edition unsatisfying.

Firstly, there is little story to it. I don’t know if much of the play was cut for the screen, or if it too was shallow on plot, but little really happens in I’ll Never Forget You. This is demonstrated by the lengthy prologue, set in modern times, which acts as nothing more than padding. We see Power and his colleague (Michael Rennie) conducting experiments with radioactive material. This may have been meant to imply the method by which the protagonist travelled through time but, if so, it was pointlessly demonstrative.

What does happen in the movie seems curiously superficial. The script blends Power’s disappointment with the past with a love story, neither of which parts are entirely convincing. The poverty, child-labour, ignorance and unsanitary conditions of London in the 1780s proves disillusioning to Power, yet when speaking of his own time, he mentions the terrible and wondrous things that have been achieved. Having just come through an horrific world war, in which atomic energy was unleashed on the planet, should have given him perspective with which to treat the past’s flaws with leniency (though the 1950s was still a time when nuclear power was seen as much more good than bad.)

As well, the love affair Power has with a lady (Ann Blyth) he meets in the past does not seem credible. Certainly the two leads are likeable enough, but they have little chemistry together. It may be that the movie was edited in different ways for different audiences, one version emphasising romance over adventure, another vice versa, as evinced by the multiplicity of titles the film has had.

The ending does not fulfill its potential. There were possibilities of a twist that would have rounded out the plot much better than it was, especially given that Blyth of the past has a replica in the present, an inexplicable development that leads no where.

There are points in I’ll Never Forget You’s favour. One aspect of time travel I’ve not seen displayed elsewhere is shown when Power meets the Duchess of Devonshire, a real-life personality renowned in her time for her beauty and wit. Though he is initially charming, Power eventually unnerves the lady; in an anachronistic phrase - and I think I can use one in writing about time travel - she becomes ‘freaked out’. His manner of complimenting her suggests to the Duchess that she is ‘already dead’. Our hero can, in effect, imitate a man of the times, but cannot impersonate him. Also, Power’s attempts to convince others of his origins leads at best to sympathy, at worst to fear and the possibility of incarceration. Power is greatly disappointed in the Age of Reason - yet how would we react to a man’s tales of time-travel?

The actual means of journeying back and forth through the centuries is never elucidated. This doesn’t other me, as the story is a fantasy, rather than science fiction. What hurt this movie was not an absence of physics, but a lack of depth and direction. If I do remember I’ll Never Forget You, it won’t be for the right reasons.