Tonight’s Film Noir is Anatole Litvak’s “The Long Night” from 1947 staring Henry Fonda (The Grapes of Wrath, 12 Angry Men) with support from Barbara Bel Geddes (Vertigo) and Ann Dvorak (Scarface) and the legendary Vincent Price (Who despite being mostly known for horror, actually did quite a lot of Film Noir too).
The Long Con
Before I talk about the plot, there is an interesting story involving this film that is a real lesson about just despicable Hollywood was historically. This movie is actually a remake of the French movie “Le jour se lève” from 1939. RKO acquired the distribution rights for the movie in preparation for remaking it and then set about buying up any and all available prints of the original film. These weren’t collected for prosperity, no they collected them to destroy them. They actually found a story they thought would be good for their market, bought it and then tried to completely erase the original movie to prevent the public from ever finding out their version wasn’t the original.
The moral of the story? Hollywood was always a cess pool. Fortunately more prints were later recovered in the 1950’s so their effort was for nothing. Sadly that was actually the second attempt at suppression for the movie as it was also banned during the occupation (Apparently for being demoralizing). Despite all that it didn’t stop the critics of the day from comparing this remake to the original and find it wanting.
The Long Story
Anyway, the plot starts of in a very traditional Film Noir style with our lead “Joe” (Fonda) barricaded into his top floor department after killing a man. The police are outside and we are given the impression Joe won’t survive the night as he seems determined not to surrender. Of course while he waits for the end he thinks back to how he got into this situation.
The story that lead him there is pretty straight forward really. He fell in love with a a woman, Jo (Geddes) but she was involved with another man. This Man, Maximillian (Price) is a real dirt bag. Charming but manipulative, lying and determined to have his prize. He has a novelty act as a dog trainer, though it turns out he abuses the dogs. At first Joe backs off and instead gets involved with another woman that shares his dislike of Maximillian, his former assistant in his dog show Charline (Dvorak). Eventually though he wins Jo around and in doing so discovers just how much of a dirt bag Maximillian is. After realising it’s over between him and Jo, Maximillian heads to Joe’s apartment with the intention of shooting him but ends up being shot by his own gun.
The Wrong Night
There are a lot of changes to this movie from the original French version. The biggest one being the ending, which is actually quite puzzling. We know Hollywood likes happy endings but the change here is jarring and doesn’t really fit within the Noir genre. Instead of the fatalism that is present in the majority of Film Noir we are presented with a much more hopeful picture. In some ways Joe is the opposite of a character like Philip Marlowe. While Marlowe is a white knight in a Noir world, Joe is a miserable fatalist surrounded by optimistic people that want him to know they care. It’s a strange thing to see in the genre.
For most of the movie Joe and Jo seem simple and naïve. This makes them easy pickings for the manipulative Maximillian. Charline by contrast though is a great character. A woman of genuine strength and wisdom that really deserves much better than jerks like Max and fools like Joe. She wants Joe to fall for her but figured pretty early on that he was in love with someone else. The truth is though, the ease with which she deals with things doesn’t make her feel that genuine and that is a big problem I had for all these characters. None of them felt real.
The Song Night
The acting though is pretty good from all involved and the film looks and sounds good. Of particular note is the score that makes heavy use of the Allegretto second movement of Beethoven’s seventh symphony. It’s a great piece of music and it does enhance the feelings of absolute despair in the siege scenes. The problem being that since the ending swerves on the viewer all the tension built up from the score seems a bit wasted.
Overall. Well it’s a very average movie really. It starts well and has its moments, but ends like a totally different movie. Characters are stupid and inconsistent and ultimately it feels like a poor take on strong source material (And that is without having seen the French original).
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