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Between Two Worlds is a 1944 film featuring a remarkable cast including John Garfield, Paul Henreid, Sydney Greenstreet and Eleanor Parker. It is a remake of the 1932 film, Outward Bound. It is not a remake of Fritz Lang's film, Destiny, (original title Der Müde Tod).
Plot
During World War II, a group of people in London board a ship for the USA. On the voyage, the steward, Scrubby (Edmund Gwenn), helps bring them to the realization that they are dead, killed by an aerial bomb as they were about to embark. They are to be judged by the Examiner (Sidney Greenstreet) and consigned to their various fates.
Thomas Prior (John Garfield) is a cynical, tough-as-nails newspaperman, wanting only permanent oblivion and too full of stubborn pride to accept a chance at redemption. Maxine Russell (Faye Emerson), his friend and female equivalent, is more regretful of her choices in life and gladly accepts her second chance. The kind-hearted Mrs. Midget (Sara Allgood) offers to accompany Prior on his journey - the Examiner reveals to Scrubby that she is Prior's mother; she gave him up at birth and wants nothing more than to be with him. The somewhat bewildered and suspicious Prior agrees.
Reverend William Duke (Dennis King) was too timid in life to go meet people and do the good he so desperately wanted to. He is given another opportunity in Heaven, as an Examiner-in-training.
Pete Musick (George Tobias) spends his time complaining that it isn't fair. He is a sailor who had survived the sinking of several ships and was on his way to rejoin his family.
Genevieve and Benjamin Cliveden-Banks (Isobel Elsom and Gilbert Emery) are a mismatched couple. She is a shallow, mercenary social climber, who married him for his wealth and social position and was unfaithful afterwards. She is doomed to live in a fabulous mansion, but with no company forever. He patiently put up with his wife's infidelities because he truly loved her. But in the end, that love was exhausted, and he refuses to join his wife in her lonely afterlife. Instead, he is reunited with his old chums.
Mr. Lingley (George Coulouris), an enormously successful and equally unscrupulous businessman, discovers he can neither browbeat nor bribe his way into Heaven.
Finally, there is the special case of Henry Bergner (Paul Henreid). Because he committed suicide by gassing himself and convinced his wife Ann (Eleanor Parker) to join him, he is doomed to remain on the ship for eternity, just like Scrubby. Or is he? At the last moment, he finds that his suicide attempt failed, and he and Ann return to life.
Other uses
The title is also taken by the second of the Lanny Budd novels of Upton Sinclair published in 1941.
External links
"Between Two Worlds"