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In Our Time (Warners) earnestly dramatizes the collision between a resistible force (liberalism) and a movable object (feudalism). The place: Poland, just before World War II. When Polish Aristocrat Paul Henreid tells his family he intends to marry British Commoner Ida Lupino, his mother drop's and breaks a cherished teacup. They marry anyhow, and by the time the Nazis invade Poland the wife has turned her idle husband into a man, his estate into a solvent farm, his ancestral home into a one-night playroom for the peasants—who are delighted to have become sharecroppers. A reactionary uncle, on the contrary, shows his hand as an appeaser.
Because it is sincerely written and carefully acted, notably by Miss Lupino, and because Vincent Sherman is one Hollywood director who tries to make every shot count, In Our Time manages now & then to give domestic point to the political drama in the background. But much of it is too purely domestic, and some of it suggests a blunted, insensitive imitation of Chekhov.