Perfect Strangers (1945 film)  Perfect Strangers (United States title: Vacation from Marriage), is a 1945 drama film made by London Films. It stars Robert Donat and Deborah Kerr as a married couple whose relationship is shaken by their service in the Second World War. The supporting cast includes Glynis Johns, Ann Todd and Roland Culver. It was produced and directed by Alexander Korda from a screenplay by Clemence Dane and Anthony Pelissier based on a story by Clemence Dane. Dane won the Academy Award for Best Story. The music score was by Clifton Parker and the cinematography by Georges Périnal. Robert and Cathy Wilson are a timid married couple in 1940 London. He is a bookkeeper, she a bored housewife. However, their tedium-filled lives are drastically changed by the war. He enlists in the Royal Navy, while she joins the Wrens. During the three years the couple are apart (their shore leaves never coincide), they are transformed, each becoming much more self-confident. Cathy's assertive new friend, Dizzy Clayton, helps her break out of her shell. She begins going out with Dizzy's cousin, naval architect Richard, who falls in love with her. However, she remains faithful (if unenthusiastically) to her husband. Meanwhile, Robert toughens up on sea duty and in time becomes a petty officer. His hands are badly burned when his ship is sunk, but he stoically rows in the lifeboat for five days without complaint. He recuperates in a hospital, tended by Elena, a beautiful nurse. On the last night of his stay, he asks her out to dinner. He is attracted to her, but she informs him that she lost her beloved husband only six months earlier, kisses him, and leaves. Robert and Cathy both receive ten-day leaves, but each dreads being reunited with the dowdy spouse each remembers and being forced back into the dreary life they shared. Cathy cannot bring herself to return to her flat, where Robert is waiting. Instead, she phones Robert and asks him to talk with her on more neutral ground, blurting out that she wants to leave him. He is furious. They meet on the street, in the pitch dark of the blackout. Robert readily agrees to a divorce, to her surprise, telling her that he was going to ask her for one. They go to the neighbourhood pub to discuss the divorce and for the first time in three years they each get a good look at the transformation in the other.