BETWEEN TWO WORLDS (1944) No pleasure cruise

In BETWEEN TWO WORLDS, a cynical newspaperman (John Garfield) finds himself on a fog-logged ocean liner. Slowly, he comes to realize that he and all the other passengers (including a young married couple who committed suicide) are dead and on a purgatorial cruise. Garfield, who specialized in tough, cynical characters most of his too-short movie career (he died at 39), is perfect in this eerie fantasy tale. His best line: The moving finger writes, and having writ, gets a move on – a Garfieldian reworking of a line from Gibran's "The Prophet." (Trivia note: OUTWARD BOUND, the 1930 version took the name of the original play. An early talkie, it starred Leslie Howard and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., and in characters and most plot points is almost identical to the later version.)