" . . . and kind of empty," shell-shocked WWII fighter "Zachary Morgan" tells secret jailbird-on-furlough "Mary Marshall" when she asks if War is like the panoramic newsreels ubiquitous in the early 1940s, when I'LL BE SEEING YOU is set. Zach has been bayoneted by a Japanese opponent, and Mary has pushed a drunken, would-be rapist out the cad's own 14th Floor window. Zach is depressed because he cannot easily hit a nearby lamp post with a rock like he used to, and Mary is anxious since she must go back to prison for another three years. Fortunately, Zach's hospital for "neuropsychiatric" sergeants and Mary's women's correctional facility are adjacent to each other. I'LL BE SEEING YOU was another effort by America's War Department (which had the final say on ALL WWII films) to condition the country to the realities of conflict. On the one had, War had left the U.S. with just a handful of male draft board rejects stateside, with tendencies to misbehave amid the sea of womenfolk left behind by all the able-bodied guys abroad, leading to many situations involving flying leaps of one sort or another. On the other hand, lots of G.I.s were bayoneted or worse. I'LL BE SEEING YOU instructs civilians on the Homefront to SECURELY chain up their dogs when the "walking wounded" are on the prowl, and to consider readopting the one-time Western practice of "branding" threats to social order, such as female killers on furlough or parole. With so many ELIGIBLE women around (like Mary's little cousin, Barbara, shown here as somewhat of a nymphomaniac), it was crucial NOT to let the thinned-out stock of American manhood sow ground better left barren.

A female convict on furlough for the holidays meets a soldier suffering from post-war trauma. The troubles of the two protagonists could have been handled more deftly, but the film does a very good job of depicting family life on the home front during WWII, helped by some good acting. Rogers is fine as the convict while Cotten is typically solid as the soldier. There are also natural, winning performances from Byington and Tull as Temple's caring parents, who host niece Rogers for the holidays. Future Hollywood Svengali Derek (husband of Ursula Andress, Linda Evans, and Bo Derek) gets his first screen credit in a small role as Temple's date.

This could almost have formed a segment of Since You Went Away which Joseph Cotton and Shirley Temple made that same year. It's also referential in borrowing the basic plot of One-Way Passage (itself remade as Till We Meet Again) substituting a train for an ocean liner but retaining the criminal and health elements; in One-Way Passage William Powell is a convict being escorted back to the States by a cop, Pat O'Brien, who meets on board ship Merle Oberon, who is terminally ill. Both conceal these rather important facts from the other and fall in love. This time around the roles are reversed and it is Ginger Rogers who is serving a prison sentence for manslaughter and has been released in order to spend Christmas with an aunt and Joseph Cotton who is not terminally ill but suffering with serious combat fatigue. Once again Rogers finds herself sharing a bedroom with a teenager and falling for a soldier - four years earlier she bunked with Diana Lynn in and fell for Ray Milland in Billy Wilder's The Major and the Minor. It's a pleasant, sentimental, hokey even, entry a reminder of how wholesome films used to be.

Mary Marshall (Ginger Rogers) is let out of prison for a few days to stay with her aunt's family. On the train, she meets soldier Zach (Joseph Cotton) who is having a few days holiday before he returns to a psychiatric hospital. They embark upon a romance before they must both return to their institutions....It's a romantic film that is well acted as we follow how two misfits come together and fall in love. A downside for me is having Shirley Temple play Barbara Marshall, Mary's younger cousin. I just find her ghastly. There are good scenes between Rogers and Cotton as we believe the love that they feel for one another. Although Cotton comes clean about his situation, Rogers' character keeps her secret to herself and this causes a misunderstanding at the end. It's a good heartwarming story.