--- title: "Since You Went Away" year: 1944 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/since-you-went-away" fi1m_score: 63 critics_score: 54 critics_reviews: 4 published: "2026-09-20T01:15:20.343614+00:00" updated: "2026-09-20T01:15:32.768955+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Since You Went Away (1944) Directed by John Cromwell · 2h 57m · MPA NR · Drama **Fi1m score: 63** · Critics 54 (early) from 4 reviews *In a sentence:* The husband is never seen; his framed photograph gets more close-ups than half the cast > David O. Selznick’s home-front picture is handsome, warmly acted and about an hour too long. Colbert, Woolley and Temple keep it honest; the script keeps stopping to tell us how to feel, and Max Steiner’s orchestra tells us again. ## Synopsis An American town, 1943. Anne Hilton (Claudette Colbert) comes home from the railway station having seen her husband off to the army, and finds the house too quiet. She has two daughters, Jane (Jennifer Jones), restless and half grown, and Bridget (Shirley Temple), younger and louder; a maid, Fidelia (Hattie McDaniel), whom she can no longer afford; and a bulldog. To make the money stretch she takes in a lodger, retired Colonel William Smollett (Monty Woolley), who inspects the spare room as if it were a barracks and objects to the dog. Tony Willett (Joseph Cotten), an old friend of the family now in the navy, turns up on leave. The Colonel’s grandson Bill (Robert Walker), a shy corporal, calls at the house and notices Jane. Anne’s job is to keep the household standing until the war is over. ## Review David O. Selznick produced and wrote *Since You Went Away*, and it runs 177 minutes, and both facts matter. It opens by calling itself the story of the American home, then spends nearly three hours proving that home can absorb any amount of orchestra. Anne Hilton (Claudette Colbert) has just seen her husband off to the war. She comes home to an empty house, and the film’s method is all in that scene: John Cromwell holds on her, Max Steiner’s strings come up, and we are told what to feel a few seconds before we have felt it. The cast is the reason it works when it does. Colbert plays Anne without fuss, a woman who deals with the household accounts before she permits herself to cry, and she is better the less the film helps her. Monty Woolley’s Colonel Smollett arrives as the lodger and is the film’s sense of humour: a man who treats a spare bedroom as an inspection and the dog as an insubordinate. Shirley Temple, as the younger daughter Bridget, is loud, funny and unsentimental, which the film needs more of. Joseph Cotten drifts in on leave as Tony Willett, the family friend a little in love with Anne, and plays it as a man who knows better than to say so. Jennifer Jones, as the elder daughter Jane, gets the one real story. She falls for the Colonel’s grandson Bill (Robert Walker), a shy corporal who has disappointed his grandfather by being gentle, and Walker is awkward in the right way. Their scenes, a bowling alley, a dance, do not need the score, and Cromwell lets them go quiet. A farewell on a railway platform, which we will not describe, got us against our will: Jane running, the train gathering pace, and Cromwell cutting to Walker’s face a moment longer than is comfortable. We had had our arms folded for an hour by then. It is handsome. Stanley Cortez and Lee Garmes share the camera credit and light the Hilton house as a place someone has just left: long shadows across the hall, a bedroom lit only by the window, Anne alone on the bed while a car’s headlights sweep across the wall and go. William Pereira’s house is exact down to the coat hooks, with enough rooms for a lodger and enough clutter to look lived in. Steiner’s score is the problem. It is on for most of the three hours, it returns to the same theme every time anyone looks at the husband’s photograph, and it does not trust a single silence. Selznick’s script is a series of episodes with sermons between them. Agnes Moorehead’s Emily Hawkins, the neighbour who hoards and complains about the servants, is there to be corrected, and is. Alla Nazimova’s Zofia, a refugee Anne meets when she takes a job at the shipyard, is handed one speech about America that plays like a poster. Lionel Barrymore’s clergyman has a sermon, literally. Hattie McDaniel’s Fidelia is let go when money runs short and comes back to work for her keep, and the film presents this as the sweetest thing in it without asking what it costs her. We found it hard to watch, and not for the reasons intended. Selznick had produced [*Gone with the Wind*](https://film.one/film/gone-with-the-wind) and [*Rebecca*](https://film.one/film/rebecca) before this, and you can see him trying to do for the home front what he had done for the Old South: one house, one family, the war kept outside the windows. Those films had someone else’s story underneath the production. This one has Selznick’s own script, and title cards that tell us what we have just seen. Against the other home-front pictures of the same years it is grander, softer and less true. It is worth an evening if you have the whole evening. Watch it for Colbert, for Woolley and the dog, for Jones and Walker’s few quiet scenes, and for the light in that house. The reviews have been split, between those who found it warm and those who found it phoney, and the film is both, usually in the same scene. *Fi1m score 63, published 20 September 2026.* ### Reviews we read (4) - **Variety**, Variety Staff (**): The film is a heart-warming panorama of human emotions during wartime, reflecting frailties alongside wholesome home life. Its episodic script by Selznick gives director Cromwell strong audience appeal through character studies. [Read](https://variety.com/1943/film/reviews/since-you-went-away-1200414250/) - **Time Out**, TCh (55/100, inferred): This is a Midwestern Mrs Miniver about the American home in 1943, with Colbert as the valiant wife and a strong supporting cast including Cotten, Jones, Temple and McDaniel. At nearly three hours it is banal without being tedious, utterly phony and quite revealing as a reflection of how America liked to picture itself. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/since-you-went-away) - **The New York Times**, Bosley Crowther (50/100, inferred): The massive production delves with warm sympathy into American home-front life but overdoes emotional detail into a large dose of choking sentiment. Colbert and Jones give strong performances amid the lonesomeness theme. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1944/07/21/archives/since-you-went-away-a-film-of-wartime-domestic-life-with-claudette.html) - **The New Yorker**, John Lardner (40/100, inferred): Selznick overtrimmed a wishful postcard version of the home front, relying on pedestrian dialogue and situations. The cast tries hard but the picture asks viewers to cry in familiar places without enough surprise or depth. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1944/07/29/1944-07-29-042-tny-cards-000015066) ## Details - **Director:** John Cromwell - **Director:** John Cromwell - **Screenplay:** David O. Selznick - **Cinematography:** Stanley Cortez, Lee Garmes - **Music:** Max Steiner - **Production design:** William Pereira - **Producer:** David O. Selznick - **Cast:** Claudette Colbert as Anne Hilton; Jennifer Jones as Jane Hilton; Joseph Cotten as Tony Willett; Shirley Temple as Bridget Hilton; Monty Woolley as William Smollett; Lionel Barrymore as Clergyman; Robert Walker as Bill Smollett; Hattie McDaniel as Fidelia - **Runtime:** 2h 57m - **Certificate (MPA):** NR - **Release (the US):** 20 July 1944 - **Genres:** Drama ## Where to watch in the US Not streaming, renting or buying in the US at the last check. ## Awards - Academy Awards 1945: Best Actress (nominated); Best Art Direction, Black and White (nominated); Best Cinematography, Black-and-White (nominated); Best Film Editing (nominated); Best Picture (nominated); Best Special Effects (nominated); Best Supporting Actor (nominated); Best Supporting Actress (nominated); Best Original Dramatic or Comedy Score (won) ## If you liked this - *Mrs Miniver* (1942), Fi1m 73: The English original this is answering; shorter, sharper, and just as pleased with itself. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/mrs-miniver.md) - *Millions Like Us* (1943): British women in an aircraft factory; the home front with the varnish left off. - *The Clock* (1945): Robert Walker again, a soldier with two days in New York and Judy Garland. - *The Cranes Are Flying* (1957): A Soviet woman waits for a man at war; the camera does the weeping. - *The Best Years of Our Lives* (1946), Fi1m 90: What happens when the men come back; the other half of this story, told better. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-best-years-of-our-lives.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/since-you-went-away