The Long Night (1947)

An Exercise In Nonsense

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

This is certainly an entertaining piece of film. It does have a bit of time getting to the point and Fonda's character is unyielding to a fault. Vincent Price has made the mistake of not only winning, but feeling the need to rub someone's face in it. He did seem a bit surprised when Fonda shot him. The movie is told in several flashbacks and works pretty well. Barbara Bel Geddes is pretty emotional. Why are movie guys so stuck in sacrificial mode. The guy had to know that the authorities had no choice but to arrest him and possibly shoot him. Unless his lower class status was so overwhelming, it seems he would have had a reasonable chance. Anyway, it's a tense little piece of entertainment. Cagney might have been better, but Fonda's big sad eyes fill the bill.

***SPOILERS*** The movie "The Long Night" starts with nightclub magician Maximilian, Vincent Price, getting blasted as he falls down two fights of stairs right in front of blinded US Marine vet Frank Dunlap, Elisha Cook Jr. As it turns out Maximilian got blown away by Joe Adams, Henry Fonda, whom he paid a visit in his one room apartment at the Travelers Hotel.As the police surround the hotel and try to take Joe Adams into custody we get this long flashback in what happened that lead up to Maximilian getting rubbed out. We see in retrospect that Joe was involved romantically with flower girl Jo Ann, Barbara Del Grebbs, whom he met, delivering flowers, in the power plant that he works at as a sandblaster. As it turned out both Joe and Jo Ann were orphans and spent their formative years at the local Good Shepard Orphanage.As things started heating up for the two lovebirds, Joe & Jo Ann, Maximilian suddenly dropped in-at the local nightclub "The Jungle"- and started to make a play for the very shy and sensitive Jo Ann. This lead Joe, in feeling that Jo Ann was two timing him, to get involved with Maximilian's former sidekick and assistant in his magic act Charlene, Ann Dvorak. Being the sensitive type himself, like Jo Ann, in not knowing whom his birth parents really are Joe in later having a mournful Maximilian confront him at a local diner is shocked to find out that Jo Ann is actually his, Maximilian's, daughter whom he abandoned at birth! The movie then goes from one flashback to another, and at one point even having a flashback within a flashback, where we and Joe find out what a first class BS artist Maximilian really is.It soon becomes evident that Maximilian is putting on an act to both confuse Joe and get into Jo Ann, who's as much his daughter as Joe is his son, pants! It's when Jo Ann tries to break off her relationship with the very determined and overbearing Maximilian that he goes to Joe's apartment and what happens there is whet we just got a glimpse off, with Maxiamilian getting blown away, what happened at the start of the film.In between the flashbacks, with Joe bearing his soul in the mess he got himself into, we have Joe holed up in his apartment holding off the entire city police force. It's only when Joe realizes that he's not alone in the world with Jo Ann and almost the entire town, in him being such a nice guy, coming to his defense that not only the cops but Joe himself cease firing giving himself a chance, in gunning down an unarmed man, to later prove his innocence in a court of law!***SPOILERS***You couldn't really feel that sorry for Joe in that not only did he put himself the local police as well as dozens of peoples lives, including Jo Ann, in jeopardy he acted like a real jerk in making himself out as the victim, in order to gain sympathy, in this whole scenario which in fact he wasn't. Talking about his experiences in the war and how he killed people in the defense of his country rang a bit hollow in his gunning down the totally helpless Maximilian who in fact handed him the gun that Joe shot and killed him with! Even though the movie ended with Joe giving himself up and looking like a hero, in gunning down an unarmed man?, we never got to see what the jury at his trial , after reviewing all the evidence in the case, final verdict was!

Putting aside the fact that this film is a remake of a French classic by Marcel Carne, and trying to judge it independently, it is a superb noir production. It most notable element is a spectacular film debut by Barbara Bel Geddes as the innocent victim of a sleazy seducer (Vincent Price at his oiliest), who starts out frozen from her traumatic origins in an orphanage and ends up screaming her heart out with all the passion of first love. Geddes holds back in the first half of the story, refusing to accept or engage with Henry Fonda, who has declared his love for her so readily. Not only does she find it difficult to trust him, but she is in thrall to a dream created by the master illusionist Price. Fonda does very well in this film, being less droll than usual, and actually manages to convince us that he is emotionally engaged rather than a bemused spectator. The fantastic amount of firepower trained on him as he is holed up in his room in a boarding house, and the readiness of the police to shoot first and think later, is horrifying. I found it bizarre in the extreme that the music credit on the film stated 'Music composed and conducted by Dimitri Tiomkin', when most of it was a dumbed-down re-scoring by Tiomkin of the second movement of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony. That is really an outrageous 'steal'. Anna Dvorak is very good indeed in this film as Charlene, who has seen it all and then some, falls for Fonda but takes it on the chin when she sees he doesn't see her. But the film must have been seriously cut, because at one point, we see Fonda throwing himself onto Charlene's bed with a very familiar air, obviously being her lover, but the dialogue makes no overt reference to there even being a meaningful relationship. Clearly a gutted script! If you look too hard, you will see a lot of holes in the story and the action. But this film is pulled off satisfactorily anyway, is gripping and because of Geddes, is also moving.

I wouldn't say The Long Night is a great film, and if anything it only peaks my interest more to see how much more classic the film it's based on is- Marcel Carne's La Jour se Leve. But for the time it ran, I was mostly glued to the screen, and got wrapped up in the plight of Henry Fonda's character Joe, and his predicament of his downfall from normalcy. It probably isn't very original, taking aside its connection with the French source; it's about a factory worker, very nice guy, who falls in love with a woman whom, he finds out, was an orphan just like him. But one night he follows her to a bar, sees her cavorting sort of with a sleazy magician (Vincent Price), and his perfect image of her is shattered, and grows only darker after he meets him (he first tells Joe he's her father, which is a truly great scene between two huge stars of classic film), and when she tells him about her history with him.While I could never take my eyes off the screen, it should be said that for all of the strong craftsmanship with the picture (it's one of the finest photographed 'noirs' of the late 40s, especially for those stark scenes of Joe alone in his room with the whole town on the street calling for him) and for all of the tremendous talent in front of the camera- besides Fonda and Price, who the former it's a splendid and rewarding if not best-ever performance and for the latter a triumph of playing sneaky and villainous, the girl playing Jo Ann (Barbara Bel Geddes) is very good- it only works up to a point. I was engrossed the most in the last twenty minutes or so, as the film revved up its pace and tempo to the "will Joe or won't Joe" beat. Before that, it's many scenes that mostly rely on the presence of the actors to uplift the material past the breezy and conventional air of the dialog. There's nothing especially "wrong" with the material, but it doesn't go anywhere aside from hitting its main points.The Long Night is something of a minor lost marvel- only recently did it come out on DVD in an OK print- and for Fonda and Price fans its a can't-miss kind of picture. Just don't go expecting anything that will change your perception of what film-noirs can go that don't go for the easy routes.