Bessie Smyth
Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.
HotToastyRag
The title song played over the credits is very pretty, and Werner Janssen's score was nominated for Best Music in 1940. However, after the opening credits are done, the movie goes downhill. Eternally Yours belongs to the group of films that tells wives in the audience to support their husbands no matter how mean, selfish, and inattentive they are. If you don't like that message, you won't like this movie.Loretta Young starts the movie engaged to Broderick Crawford, but when she goes with her girlfriends to see David Niven, a famous magician, it's love at first sight. So far so good. But is there a secret twist to their love-was he hypnotizing her or using a magic trick to win her love? No, there's neither imagination nor secret twists in Gene Towne's and C. Graham Baker's script. Countless times I thought the story would turn in a different, clever direction but it never did. Loose ends aren't tied, and inventive plot lines aren't explored. As much as I love David Niven, this isn't one of his good movies.
edwagreen
Routine film with Loretta Young married to magician David Niven. After a misunderstanding, she divorces him and weds of all people, Broderick Crawford. Crawford, who always could be counted as being a heavy in films is really a guy coming off as a fool. Somewhat such as Ralph Bellamy would have been far better suited for the part.Of course, Young still loves Niven so the end is so very obvious.Even the very comical ZaSu Pitts is greatly subdued here; she still made those famous gestures of hers with her hands.It's amazing that I always found the Young-Niven pictures to be very bland in nature. Perhaps, they really should have tried great drama together.
Cristi_Ciopron
In this crass comedy from his youth, Niven plays an illusionist named Tony or Arturo, the 2nd being, as you have already guessed, his stage name, and this Tony begins taking death defying leaps; his wife is the pretty Anita (--performed by the spicy and cute Loretta Young--). She divorces him once she realizes their views of life don't match very much—she wants to settle, he wants to travel, etc., you know this marriages between a British magician and his assistant coming from an American Episcopalian background. Anita's granddaddy is an American Bishop of the Hollywoodian sort common to most of the righteous movie priests of the Latin rites, either Anglican or Catholic—dignified, wise, calm, unobtrusive and reliable—why, you know those American Bishops. Anita picks a 2nd husband, a youngster fat, ugly and dolt (--and strong as a bull--); she soon realizes that life with this fatty is even worse. She of course refuses to give herself to him; her Tony was slick and a bit funny, her present husband is clumsy, boring and uninspiring. This refused husband is shown, furious, dejected, seeking his pajamas in his voyage bag, a sad scene, fortunately short. Arturo regrets loosing Anita; he wants this babe back.ETERNALLY YOURS is execrably written, and not a very good movie; it wishes to be a comical romance. The characters' deeds say nothing about them, don't express them at all.Loretta Young is 'Anita', Zasu Pitts does a supporting part (--again, strangely appealing--), the very nice Virginia Field plays 'Lola De Vere', Niven's assistant.I guess I never knew anyone who was a Niven fan. His performances are average at best; his mischievous face and nervousness, as of a Rathbone on a severe diet, gave him a distinct profile, usable in comedy format—and not much else. Niven, ironic, dry, witty and essentially melancholy, was a bit of a stock character for British comedies, if you take my meaning. Niven, as you ought to know, was a bi-dimensional actor, very limited, a nice vaudeville type. His characters are cartoons, in a very narrow register; he made his lookalike Guinness seem a regular Welles by comparison. As often with Niven, his character has an essential sadness and gloom; he feigns cheating on his wife, which he doesn't, etc.. Otherwise, the characters are _undelineable. The script is rubbish, there's no story, the lines are dull; so, uninteresting, rudimentary characters in a non—existent script (there are a couple of presumably double _entendres like—'we always did it at the finish of every act …--of every performance', says 'Anita' after she kisses 'Arturo').
canario
This is a nice classic comedy about the romance between a bishop´s granddaughter and a successful magician. Although it isn´t a typical screwball comedy it has the usual charm of the 30´s. One of the things I most like in the film is the naturality of the characters and the relationships between them, without any superfual mildness. It´s also a film about marriage and divorce in a way that I find outstanding for that time and it´s full of funny and emotive situations in the way of films like Ernst Lubitsch Bluebeard´s Eighth Wife. In a funny way, i just want to comment one detail that makes me laugh but I don't know if that was the original intention. It is near to the end, when the magician is going to make one his most dangerous tricks and his assistant wants to stop him because is going to kill himself. The magician calls the police to take the assistant away from him and says: "arrest him, he is a communist!". And it wasn´t witch-hunt time yet!!
