Crapshoot Cinema: Tomorrow We Live (1943)

When it comes to movies made during World War Two, it’s always interesting to see how different countries approached the conflict. America, while highlighting the grim aspects of the war, always ended with some variation of “We’re gonna kick some tail.”

Many British and European films, however, seemed to take more of a “We escaped and live to fight another day” kind of angle, and Tomorrow We Live is one of those. A 1943 British film, there are a few dashes of Hogan’s Heroes-type humor and vibes before grim reality sets in.

Jean-Baptiste comes into the fictional town of “St. Pierre-le-Port,” which, except for the Nazi troops marching around, seems pretty normal. He’s looking for a place to stay and to avoid any Nazi entanglements. He’s also a member of the resistance, and as St. Pierre is off the coast, it’s a useful spot to gather data about German U-boats and relay it to the Brits.

However, Jean-Baptiste has every intention of passing through until he starts meeting the locals, two of which are especially intriguing. Germaine runs the local cafe and Marie works in a dress shop, and they both cast their eyes at Jean-Baptiste.

It might all seem fun, except that Marie keeps company with the local commandante. To be fair, he kind of forces her into it, but Jean-Baptiste isn’t impressed. He’s even less impressed when it turns out that Germaine is relaying sensitive information to the Nazis.

While the local commandante gives off Sergeant Schultz vibes, he’s still ruthless, and when the locals make fun of a Hitler newsreel at the cinema, he closes the place for a month. The officer who replaces him later is the spitting image of Colonel Klink, only a bit less jolly, and when the resistance ramps up its efforts to get information to the Brits, he closes in mercilessly. The movie takes a really dark turn when it becomes clear that the whole village is pretty much doomed.

Tomorrow We Live must have been pretty heartening for British audiences in a bittersweet way. The villagers have no problem declaring that as French people they’re entitled to live freely and declare their allegiance to France. There’s even one scene when dozens of villagers are being marched through the village to meet a firing squad, yet they sing “La Marsellaise” with gusto.

Yet for some reason the film has fallen into public domain and largely overlooked, maybe because once the war was over people wanted to forget what had gone on.

It’s a shame. Forgetting why that war was fought and what real freedom looks like, and it’s not the performative indulgence and identity politics we see so often from certain people in social media, sums up a lot of our current-day problems.

Would we have the wherewithal to do what these resistance fighters did? Then, as now, some had the courage to risk everything, and others went along to get along. Tomorrow We Live serves to hang a big question mark in the air.

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Tomorrow We Live is currently streaming on Tubi. Not rated.

My grade: A-

Principal Cast: John Clements, Godfrey Teale, Hugh Sinclair, Greta Gynt, Judy Kelly, Yvonne Arnaud, Karel Stepanek, Bransby Williams, Fritz Wendhausen, Allan Jeayes, Gabrielle Brun, Margaret Yarde, David Keir, Anthony Holles, Olaf Olsen, D.J. Williams, John Salew, Walter Gotell

Directed by George King.

Written by Anatole de Grunewald, Dorothy Hope, and Katherine Strueby.