The Cinematheque

New Restoration

“A genuine cinematic gem … Kent’s groundbreaking film is uncommonly perceptive concerning the contradictory condition facing the independent woman in a sexist society.”

Piers Handling, TIFF

Larry Kent’s third feature and first ​“professional” film—i.e. cast and crew were actually paid!—saw the director age up his thematic concerns from youthful malaise to marital unrest. Scripted by Robert Harlow, a creative writing professor at UBC, this Vancouver-set portrait of domestic disillusionment adopts the perspective of a stifled, put-upon housewife (Patricia Gage, Rabid) who seizes on the ​’60s social-liberation movement, much to the chagrin of her traditionalist husband (Douglas Campbell). Believing she can balance familial duties and female empowerment, she enrolls in higher education and falls for her debonair English professor (Neil Dainard). When Tomorrow Dies marked Kent’s biggest budget to that point, enabling him to hire trained actors and an experienced cinematographer (Doug McKay, Madeleine Is…). Its excursions into impressionism signaled an evolution in Kent’s visual style, while the story evinced a clear-eyed grasp of the lopsided nature of ​“free love” under patriarchy.

“The feminist storyline … was well ahead of its time, a precursor of films such as Diary of a Mad Housewife and A Woman Under the Influence.”

David Spaner, author of Dreaming in the Rain: How Vancouver Became Hollywood North by Northwest