'In every dream home a heartache,' Bryan Ferry crooned in the 1973 Roxy Music song. It's a theme Hollywood auteur Douglas Sirk repeatedly investigated in his deluxe 1950s 'women's pictures'. Under their lush soap opera exteriors, Sirk's films are spiked with veiled social criticism, recognisable by his compassion for his dysfunctional characters and his employment of outrageously heightened artifice to convey heartfelt emotion.  

1956's There's Always Tomorrow is a lesser-known family melodrama made between (and overshadowed by) two of Sirk's most celebrated works, All That Heaven Allows and Written on the Wind. Set in suburban Los Angeles, the film is black and white, smaller in scale and more intimate in feel.  

…Tomorrow is also exceptional for its rare male protagonist: stoical toy company executive Clifford Grove (Fred MacMurray) is a husband and father taken for granted by his self-absorbed family.  Outwardly his life is affluent suburban contentment; in reality it's sterile, emotionally stifled. Sirk draws parallels between Cliff and the new toy he's currently marketing and in danger of becoming: Rex the walkie talkie robot. Cliff and his bustling, prim, cheerfully oblivious wife (Joan Bennett) sleep in separate single beds; early on there's an illuminating glimpse of him in the kitchen wearing a floral apron, like James Dean's emasculated father in Nicholas Ray's Rebel without a Cause. When former work colleague Norma Vale (Barbara Stanwyck) reappears after a 20-year absence it stirs up dormant emotions, and they find themselves on the brink of an affair.

Soundtracked by the yearning ballad 'Blue Moon', Cliff and Norma's hesitant romantic awakening feels urgent: precisely because they're middle-aged there's more at stake - they had better grasp what may be their last chance at happiness. (There isn't always tomorrow!). The reliably excellent MacMurray and Stanwyck (reunited for the first time since Billy Wilder's 1944 noir masterpiece Double Indemnity) give nuanced and poignant performances.

Middleclass family life is depicted as a prison: Cliff confesses to Norma he feels like he's been entombed alive. His suspicious, interfering children are quick to assume the worst (ask yourself if you still want to procreate after seeing a Sirk film). Culminating in one of Sirk's patented ambivalent 'happy endings', There's Always Tomorrow is a devastating critique of emotional repression and self-sacrifice. It also still feels relevant and universal. Fans of the Richard Yates novel Revolutionary Road and TV's Mad Men in particular will find much to admire.
Graham Russell