James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan were an especially well-suited screen team, and Next Time We Love is especially fortunate to have them. Stewart's innate goodness and Sullavan's slightly-covered-over-by-selfishness goodness create a nifty give-and-take between the two which is the stuff that splendid screen relationships are made of. We in the audience know from the start that these two share a heart and are meant to be together, and in Next, it's a good thing we know it, because Melville Baker and Preston Sturges' screenplay does everything it can to keep us from believing it. How so? Well, they have contrived to take the veneer of self-interest that defines Sullavan and play that up so that her character comes across as quite self-centered and ultimately irritating and unlikeable -- or would meet that fate were the lovely and lovable Sullavan not playing her. But even this fine actress can only do so much given a script that works so hard against her. Stewart, quite young, is in very fine form, as is Ray Milland as the third wheel in the equation, but they too are hampered by a script that doesn't so much play to their strengths as lean unconscionably on them.
![Clifton Webb: Cinema Archives - 3-Film Collection [3 Discs]](http://prodimage.images-bn.com/pimages/0024543027904_p0_v2_s90x140.jpg "Clifton Webb: Cinema Archives - 3-Film Collection [3 Discs]")
