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There’s Always Tomorrow [35mm] + ScreenTalk with Elena Gorfinkel, John David Rhodes and Joanna Hogg

Barbican Cinemas, London

13MarBook cover for The Prop by Elena Gorfinkel and John David Roads

 

Join the Barbican for this rare screening and opportunity to delve into Douglas Sirk's masterful melodrama There's Always Tomorrow that explores the suffocating confines of middle-class domesticity.

Centered on Fred MacMurray’s deeply poignant portrayal of a husband and father who reconnects with an old flame (Barbara Stanwyck), the film examines the fleeting allure of escape and the crushing pull of societal expectations.

Screened on 35mm, this film’s richly detailed mise-en-scène gains new resonance through the lens of The Prop by Elena Gorfinkel and John David Rhodes. As Gorfinkel and Rhodes suggest, Sirk’s films elevate everyday objects—lamps, teacups, and furniture—to silent witnesses of emotional turmoil, amplifying the tension between characters and their environments.

The domestic items in There’s Always Tomorrow become more than mere set dressing; it serves as a narrative agent, embodying the constraints of suburban life and the unspoken desires simmering beneath its surface.

At this event

Elena Gorfinkel

Reader in Film Studies


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