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I love this movie so much

Highly Overrated But Still Good

it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

When the story begins, Sheila Page (Joan Lesley) has just killed her husband, Barney (Louis Hayward), and she is naturally very distraught. She wishes she hadn't done it and wishes she had the last year to do over again...and miraculously that's what happens next. Now Sheila has a chance to do things differently, though repeatedly whatever she did to avoid this fate, it ends up happening the same way anyway. To make things worse, Sheila doesn't seem to have learned a lot by getting her second chance! There just seems to be a horrible sense that fate is inescapable.As I watched the Pages going through that year ago, I kept thinking that I, too, would have shot Barney! He was the worst of husbands...and I thought that if he came back to life and Sheila had the year to live over, she would have divorced him. After all, he was an alcoholic, a cheater and a nasty guy down deep...and he only gets worse as the film progresses.Overall, it's a very unusual plot but some of the wonderfulness of this is lost because the character, Sheila, was so dopey and seemed to learn nothing by having the year to do again. Worth seeing but frustrating at times because you can't tell if it's all about fate...or Sheila just being a very, very slow learner.

I've had a VHS copy of this for years from the early days of the Z channel. I had seen it even earlier than that and it was memorable. I've always found it fascinating, with an unusual plot line. Great Broadway background. I'm glad it's finally been restored. The old print badly restoration. I can't wait to see this released on DVD. Excellent performances all around. A real stunner for Joan Leslie who was never better. Hopefully she can provide a commentary track and how she got involved with this project. I'd heard about the restoration as there must be a lot of fans. See this one. Apparently I have to write ten lines so I hope this suffices.

I just saw this film play in a 16mm copy last Friday night ~Jan 25 '08. The brochure stated that there were no usable 35mm prints good enough for playing on a big screen.It played at The Castro Theatre in San Francisco. Also playing with another unreleased to DVD Joan Leslie movie "The Hard Way"This well thought out movie has it all. It doesn't sell out the possibilities that could go wrong or against you if you were living it.The main actors in this stylish film noir romp all were credible in their motives and actions. Seeing Natalie Schafer from Gilligan's Island fame was funny playing a scheming and controlling diva of the arts world. Tom Conway as "everybody's big brother" had a part that he owned. Louis Hayward as the cheating husband and Virginia Field who was playing along with the dangerous and cheating fun. You could tell that there were sparks between them. Those same sparks were missing in the married relationship with Joan.Basehart was great in his first film role. There were some outrageous corny lines of dialogue that had the audience laughing along with the scene when it wasn't supposed to be funny on screen. But, overall he nailed it in a crucial part.I hope that this comes to DVD soon while Joan is still around. It would be even more astounding if she herself gave a running commentary to it!!!

WhenI was a kid in the 50's, this film was always shown on TV on New Year's Eve. I would look forward to it and always enjoyed it. As New Year's Eve approaches this year, I just happened to think about it for the first time in years and could not find it on TV, VCR or DVD. I was happy to read the very positive user comments on the quality of the film and lamenting its lack of availability. I note that Leaonard Maltin even dropped this film from his 2006 edition of his guide, perhaps because there is no tape or DVD version. I hope someone, somewhere, with rights to this little gem does release it for home viewing or a TV channel like TCM or PBS finds it in their library and decides to show it, perhaps on a New Year's Eve.