Repeat Performance

This wonderfully dark little gem combines elements of film noir, backstage melodrama and magical realism. Joan Leslie stars as a successful Broadway actress who shoots her failed playwright husband on New Year’s Eve and desperately wishes she had the year to live over again. Suddenly, she’s granted just that wish and finds herself getting to live 1946 all over again. But will knowledge of the future provide her with the power to prevent herself and others from making the same mistakes as before, or is the hand of fate far stronger?

The low-budget, independent production plays a little like a noir fantasy version of All About Eve, with George Sanders’s brother, Tom Conway (the esteemable star of The Falcon, Bulldog Drummond, The Saint and several Val Lewton classics) playing a far less caddish character than Addison DeWitt. The "Eve" of this story is not an aspiring actress but a successful playwright (Virginia Field) whose femme fatal characteristics are one of the things that earn this film the noir label.