Since You Went Away

by Richard Armstrong

One evening in autumn 1979 I was in the audience at London's National Film Theatre watching Since You Went Away, a war weepie starring Claudette Colbert and Jennifer Jones. I had had a crush on Jennifer Jones since I saw Beat the Devil earlier that year and took an afternoon off work when The Song of Bernadette aired on television. When she is told that her young husband has been killed storming the beach at Salerno, I felt for this beautiful, tough-minded girl on the cusp of womanhood and I began to cry. As the lights came up a lifetime later, I saw that I was not alone. One man blew his nose as he sidled towards the aisle, still transfixed by the screen. A woman dabbed at the tracks of mascara-stained tears. People seemed to be looking down as they headed for the exits, and tended to smile and think of each other as they negotiated the doorways.

The director of Since You Went Away was John Cromwell. I recently had to write an entry on his career for an encyclopedia and, researching his dates, I discovered that he died on 26 September 1979. That was the day we watched Since You Went Away at the National Film Theatre.

Copyright © Richard Armstrong 2004