scriibe I saw this movie on TV many years ago on a local late-night movie program which followed the 11pm news. It was during the week between Christmas and New Years, so my mind was occupied with other matters so all I really remembered was that it starred John Mills and that it took place over the span of several decades, but something about the movie stuck in my head. Thanks to IMDb I was able to identify it as "So Well Remembered", and that it was out on DVD.John Mills is great as George Boswell, reform-minded newspaper editor and member of the town council in a bleak Lancashire mill town, who falls in love with the daughter of the town pariah, a corrupt industrialist.Based on a James Hilton (Lost Horizon) novel, the film has it's share of soap opera-like moments, but enough of its literary heritage to tell a highly compelling story. The story also has a certain relevance today with the political and social elements, and it is a little depressing to see how things have not changed since 1919.

Amy Smith Martha Scott was an actress that has been acknowledged consistently as a "Good Actress", yet never achieved the Superstar status that she truly deserved- not for celebrity, but for sheer acting skill alone. She is excellent here as a narcissistic, maneuvering woman who lacks the depth to appreciate the man she has pledged herself to in marriage. When she seeks to cheat the Law of sowing what you reap, you see the machinations of a woman desperate to evade the loneliness that she herself has unwittingly planned.....John Mills, the unsung hero here, is wonderful as the pragmatic, yet compassionate man who would redirect himself if need be to follow this true heart. Trevor Howard is once again first-rate, entirely believable in the role of a beleaguered doctor....Well-written,and inspirationally cast, this film is a keeper!

bkoganbing The biggest question I have about So Well Remembered is why this film was lost all these years? Usually 'lost' films are from the silent and early sound era. I've never heard of a film done as late as 1947 being lost. And sad too because from this talented cast I've seen some of the best performances from them.Another thing that puzzles me as far as the film being lost is that James Hilton was such a popular author on both sides of the pond. I would have thought this film would have been as frequently revived as Random Harvest, Goodbye Mr. Chips, and The Lost Horrizon.Hilton narrates the film and for both British and American audiences it was a familiar voice, they heard it many times on radio. Hilton was never shy about promoting his own work on the best media available to him.Like Random Harvest the story takes place in the years between the World Wars. John Mills is an earnest young reformer who both wants to do some good in this old world for the people of the small Lancaster mill town that he comes from. They are a poor lot, many living on the dole because the factories have closed and they were swindled out of their life savings by Frederick Leister who was the owner and chief employer of the town. Leister went to prison and upon this the story begins as his attractive young daughter Martha Scott is looking for employment as a librarian.The towns folk want to visit the sins of the father on her, but Mills is a forgiving sort and persuades the town to hire her. This leads to romance and they marry. But gradually over the course of the movie, the two are shone to be a bad match with their different agendas.Martha Scott is an actress sad to say pretty much forgotten. My first memory of her is hosting a short anthology series, Modern Romances in the early days of television. Up to now I thought her best film role was as the dutiful minister's wife in One Foot In Heaven. But in So Well Remembered her part as the scheming manipulating wife is best described as a combination of Regina Hubbard from The Little Foxes and Estella from Great Expectations. And that this performance was lost all these years didn't help Martha Scott for posterity's sake.Trevor Howard plays Mills's best friend, the alcoholic town doctor, no doubt a character Hilton borrowed from many a Hollywood western. Howard serves as the film's conscience however, he's seen too much and lived too much in poverty to be charitable. Except he does perform one good act of charity in the film.The hero/protagonist that John Mills plays would have been done by Jimmy Stewart if So Well Remembered had an American setting. Mills is like so many Capra heroes, the decent and honorable man on whom the people look for leadership and who has his flaws as well. At one point he does fall victim to temptation in a crisis brought on indirectly by the scheming Scott. But Mills realizes what he's done and pulls back from temptation. Patricia Roc and Richard Carlson play an attractive pair of young lovers, connected to the others and whose lives have been directed by the foibles of the older generation. So Well Remembered is a fabulous restored classic and a tribute to its author James Hilton, a man so well remembered and so well loved in the UK and the USA.

tarmcgator I have been fortunate enough to catch SO WELL REMEMBERED a couple of times on TCM, and I hope they will add it to their "rotation" of popular films. It deserves more attention, and I doubt many Americans have paid it, either when the film was released in 1947, or today. (If indeed it was thought to be lost, a big "Hoorah" for the person who found it.)Many Hollywood films touch on class conflict, but usually in the romantic contexts of poor-boy-woos-rich-girl (e.g., THE GREAT GATSBY, A PLACE IN THE SUN) or rich-boy-woos-poor-girl (KITTY FOYLE, WORKING GIRL). The British obsession with political class struggle surfaces only occasionally, usually in Depression-era films like MR. DEEDS GOES TO TOWN, MODERN TIMES, or THE GRAPES OF WRATH. As some film historians have demonstrated, when Hollywood's main audience began to shift from working class to middle class around 1920, class conflict as a political and economic issue (as opposed to a romantic and social concern) all but disappeared from American movies.But the portrayal of British class conflict is not the main reason to watch SO WELL REMEMBERED (which, in fact, also sets forth the conflict largely in terms of romantic relationships). It's one of those multi-generational sagas with a twist ending, and while the story is rather predictable, the characters that inhabit it are quite interesting and well-played. (John Paxton adapted James Hilton's novel for the film, and Hilton -- best known as the author of LOST HORIZON -- also narrates some portions.) John Mills makes an appropriate working-class hero, trying to remain loyal to his origins while at the same time tempted by the opportunities presented to him to rise above them. During the course of the quarter-century covered in the film, his character matures realistically. Trevor Howard, however, steals the film as an alcoholic doctor -- he makes the most of every moment on the screen. Martha Scott -- a very active actress who nonetheless did not become especially well-known to the public -- has the most difficult part in the film, transitioning from a sympathetic young woman into a selfish (and, horrors! classist) shrew as the film progresses. Patricia Roc was one of England's most popular film performers in the '40s but was rarely seen in the United States. She is pleasant enough but nothing special here. It's difficult to understand why Richard Carlson never became a major star, along the lines of Glenn Ford or Charlton Heston. He had the looks and he certainly had the voice, and he is fine here as Roc's love interest. And give a hearty nod to Frederick Leister, who has a brief but important part in the opening minutes. It would have been interesting to know more about his character, who, in some ways, is at the root of the story.One should also congratulate director Edward Dmytryk and his collaborators for the gritty location photography, another feature that makes this film worth more than one viewing.SO WELL REMEMBERED also is notable for the collaboration of Dmytryk and producer Adrian Scott. Right after this film, this RKO duo made CROSSFIRE (with another Paxton screenplay), one of Hollywood's most notable "social consciousness" films of the late 1940s. And about the time SO WELL REMEMBERED was first being shown in the United States, Dmytryk, Scott and eight screenwriters -- the celebrated "Hollywood Ten" -- would be ruled in contempt of the U.S. House Committee on Un-American Activities for refusing to answer the committee's questions regarding Communist involvement in Hollywood. All of the Ten served jail time, although Dmytryk eventually decided to tell the committee what it wanted to hear and thus avoided the film-industry blacklisting that the other nine men would endure for several years. The blacklisting connection also extended to the film's soundtrack. Composer Hanns Eisler (1898-1962), a German Communist who fled the Nazis in 1933 and eventually settled in the United States, also was called before "HUAC" and wound up being deported to Communist East Germany in March 1948. Considering the class-conflict background of SO WELL REMEMBERED, perhaps it's not surprising that this film has been so well overlooked (one wonders how long it actually played in American theaters in 1947). I doubt many Americans today (except, perhaps, the disciples of the late Jesse Helms) would find this film in any way "communistic," but the political atmosphere in the United States was different and more fearful in 1947. (Yes, I know, but the current Bush-era hysteria doesn't begin to compare with the 1947-1954.)