Preceded by The Shining Future, a Hollywood all-star War Bonds appeal featuring Frank Sinatra. (1944, 20 mins, Print from UCLA Film Archives)

Dick Powell stars with a fine supporting cast in René Clair's fantastic comedy-drama, set at the turn of the century, about a young reporter who receives copies of tomorrow's headlines today, courtesy of a ghostly old gentleman. After two sensational scoops and a lucrative day at the races, he is caught short by a preview which includes an announcement of his own death. Clair, who mastered many a chase scene, here outdoes himself in a race of great speed and tension against destiny itself. Clair has said that, of his four American films, this is his favorite; here, fantasy is treated seriously, with some of the dark feeling of his earlier Le Dernier Millionaire or the Faustian La Beauté du Diable. As Catherine de la Roche observes, “It Happened Tomorrow belongs to the remoter haunts of Clair's world, where the fascination of the supernatural, of chance and fatality, holds sway....”