''The Long Night'' is a 1947 American

film noir Film noir (; ) is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and motivations. The 1940s and 1950s are generally regarded as the "classic period" of American '' ...

crime In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definitions of", in C ...

drama Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has b ...

directed by

Anatole Litvak Anatoly Mikhailovich Litvak (russian: Анатолий Михайлович Литвак; 21 May 1902 – 15 December 1974), better known as Anatole Litvak, was a Ukrainian-born American filmmaker who wrote, directed, and produced films in vari ...

and produced by

RKO Pictures RKO Radio Pictures Inc., commonly known as RKO Pictures or simply RKO, was an American film production and distribution company, one of the "Big Five" film studios of Hollywood's Golden Age. The business was formed after the Keith-Albee-Orph ...

. It is a remake of ''

Le jour se lève ''Le jour se lève'' (, "The day rises"; also known as ''Daybreak'') is a 1939 French film directed by Marcel Carné and written by Jacques Prévert, based on a story by Jacques Viot. It is considered one of the principal examples of the French ...

'' (1939) by

Marcel Carné Marcel Albert Carné (; 18 August 1906 – 31 October 1996) was a French film director. A key figure in the poetic realism movement, Carné's best known films include ''Port of Shadows'' (1938), ''Le Jour Se Lève'' (1939), '' The Devil's Envoys ...

. The drama stars

Henry Fonda Henry Jaynes Fonda (May 16, 1905 – August 12, 1982) was an American actor. He had a career that spanned five decades on Broadway and in Hollywood. He cultivated an everyman screen image in several films considered to be classics. Born and ra ...

Barbara Bel Geddes Barbara Bel Geddes (October 31, 1922 – August 8, 2005) was an American stage and screen actress, artist, and children's author whose career spanned almost five decades. She was best known for her starring role as Miss Ellie Ewing in the te ...

Vincent Price Vincent Leonard Price Jr. (May 27, 1911 – October 25, 1993) was an American actor, art historian, art collector and gourmet cook. He appeared on stage, television, and radio, and in more than 100 films. Price has two stars on the Hollywood Wal ...

and

Ann Dvorak Ann Dvorak (born Anna McKim; August 2, 1911 – December 10, 1979) was an American stage and film actress. Asked how to pronounce her adopted surname, she told ''The Literary Digest'' in 1936: "My fake name is properly pronounced ''vor'shack ...

. The title of the original French film is an idiom which translates roughly as "dawn is breaking". ''The Long Night'' was the first screen appearance by character actress

and it served as a springboard for Bel Geddes's career. RKO signed Bel Geddes to a seven-year contract.

Plot

A dead man tumbles down a flight of stairs. When the police arrive at the top-floor apartment of Joe Adams (

), he shoots at them through the door. The sheriff calls in reinforcements and sets up snipers on nearby rooftops. Adams, in his room, begins a recollection of the events leading up to this, beginning with his first chance encounter with Jo Ann (

), who works in a flower shop. It turns out they had been raised in the same orphanage. The story unfolds in a series of flashbacks, and even a flashback within a flashback, as Joe recalls what Jo Ann told him about her life before they met. Finding her behavior suspicious, he follows her to a nightclub where Maximilian the Great (

) is performing a magic act on stage. At the bar, Joe gets to know Charlene (

), who recently quit as Max's assistant. Max claims to be Jo Ann's long-lost father. She was picked out of the audience one night by Charlene and brought on stage to take part in the act, then continued a relationship. Jo Ann fiercely denies to Joe, however, that Max is related to her. In fact, she insists that she had to physically fend off Max's romantic advances to her. The two women have feelings for Joe but leave him mystified, particularly when both appear to have received exactly the same brooch from Max as a gift. Jo Ann naively believes that hers is a rare antique that once belonged to Montezuma's daughter. The more worldly-wise Charlene suggests she believed Max's line at first too, but she now has a whole display card of them marked at a price of 85 cents each. He is not sure whom to trust, and when Max comes to his apartment to kill him, Joe shoots first, sending Max falling to his death. When Max first arrives at Joe's shabby boarding house room, he demands that he leave Jo Ann alone. In the ensuing argument Joe pushes Max halfway out of the window but cannot bring himself to kill his rival. Max observes that it is not so easy to kill a man, and shows Joe the pistol he brought with the intention of shooting him. Max, who has always been pretentiously snobbish, begins to taunt Joe. He tells him that he thinks Joe is beneath him, and then begins to insinuate that he and Jo Ann had a sexual relationship. Joe becomes enraged and shoots Max. Police are about to smoke him out with tear gas when Jo Ann arrives. She manages to talk Joe into giving himself up, promising to wait for him if he is sent away to prison. Joe had considered himself friendless, but most of the assembled crowd, including Joe's coworker and neighbor Bill Pulanski, and Frank Dunlap, a blind man who lives in the neighborhood, support him.

Cast

as Joe Adams *

as Jo Ann *

as Maximilian *

as Charlene *

Howard Freeman Howard Freeman (December 9, 1899 – December 11, 1967) was an American actor of the early 20th century, and film and television actor of the 1940s through the 1960s. Biography Freeman was born in Helena, Montana, and began working as ...

as Sheriff Ned Meade *

Moroni Olsen Moroni Olsen (June 27, 1889November 22, 1954) was an American actor. Life and career Olsen was born in Ogden, Utah to Latter-day Saint parents Edward Arenholt Olsen and Martha ( Hoverholst) Olsen, who named him after the Moroni found in the ...

as Chief of Police *

Elisha Cook Jr. Elisha Vanslyck Cook Jr. (December 26, 1903 – May 18, 1995) was an American character actor famed for his work in films noir. According to Bill Georgaris of TSPDT: They Shoot Pictures, Don't They, Cook appeared in a total of 21 film ...

as Frank Dunlap * Queenie Smith as Mrs. Tully * David Clarke as Bill Pulanski *

Charles McGraw Charles McGraw (born Charles Crisp Butters; May 10, 1914 – July 29, 1980) was an American stage, film and television actor whose career spanned more than three decades. Early life McGraw was born to Beatrice (née Crisp) and Francis P. B ...

as Policeman Stevens * Patty King as Peggy

Production

When RKO acquired the distribution rights to ''

'' in preparation for remaking it as ''The Long Night'', they also sought to buy up all available prints of the original film and destroy them. For a time, it was thought that the French film had been lost completely, but copies of it re-appeared in the 1950s and its classic status was re-established. The score for the film makes extensive use of the famous

Allegretto In musical terminology, tempo (Italian, 'time'; plural ''tempos'', or ''tempi'' from the Italian plural) is the speed or pace of a given piece. In classical music, tempo is typically indicated with an instruction at the start of a piece (often ...

second movement of

Beethoven Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. Beethoven remains one of the most admired composers in the history of Western music; his works rank amongst the most performed of the classic ...

's Seventh Symphony.

Reception

Box office

According to ''

Variety Variety may refer to: Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats * Variety (radio) * Variety show, in theater and television Films * ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont * ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...

'', the film earned less than $1 million at the box office.''Variety'' 7 January 1948
/ref> The film recorded a loss of $1 million.Richard Jewell & Vernon Harbin, ''The RKO Story.'' New Rochelle, New York: Arlington House, 1982. p221

Critical response

A ''

Life Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for growth, reaction to stimuli, metabolism, energy ...

'' magazine review at the time blamed "Hollywood commercialism and the stultifying institution of censorship" for the film's poor quality, noting that, "because anything having to do with incest is banned from U.S. films by censors and because Hollywood considers sad endings unprofitable, a moving and mature tragedy has been remade into melodramatic goulash."

References

External links

* * * *
''The Long Night''
information site and DVD review at DVD Beaver (includes images) {{DEFAULTSORT:Long Night, The 1947 films 1947 crime drama films American crime drama films American remakes of French films American black-and-white films 1940s English-language films Film noir Films scored by Dimitri Tiomkin Films directed by Anatole Litvak Films set in Ohio Films produced by Robert and Raymond Hakim RKO Pictures films 1940s American films