Night Unto Night ** (1949, Ronald Reagan, Viveca Lindfors, Broderick Crawford) – Classic Movie Review 7981

Director Don Siegel’s intriguing and offbeat but rather ploddingly handled 1949 Warner Bros black and white romantic drama Night unto Night stars Ronald Reagan, Viveca Lindfors, Rosemary DeCamp and Broderick Crawford.

Lindfors and Reagan play a disturbed, bereaved wife called Ann Gracey (Lindfors), haunted by the voice of her dead husband, and an incurably ill epileptic scientist named John Galen (Reagan), who console each other on the Florida coast.

An arguably promising idea is rendered semi-impotent by a screenplay by Kathryn Scola that follows the book (by Philip Wylie) it was based on too closely and too pedestrianly. This was the second feature Siegel directed (after The Verdict) before finding fame with such films such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Flaming Star, The Beguiled and Dirty Harry, but unfortunately his talent is mostly wasted here, though both he and the actors do try very hard to make it work. Unsurprisingly, it is a more or less forgotten film, and more or less deservedly so.

Swedish-born Lindfors (1920–1995) was a good actress but she never became the ‘new Ingrid Bergman’ as Warner Bros hoped, Reagan was a moderate actor, who also never became a major movie star. Somehow, neither of them have the stuff of super-stardom.

Also in the cast are Osa Massen, Craig Stevens, Erskine Sanford and Art Baker, with Ann Burr, Johnny McGovern, Lillian Yarbo, Ross Ford, Almira Sessions and Dick Elliott.

Night Unto Night is directed by Don Siegel, runs 86 minutes, is made and released by Warner Bros, is written by Kathryn Scola, based on the novel by Philip Wylie, is shot in black and white by Peverell Marley, is produced by Owen Crump, and is scored by Franz Waxman.

There was no rush to release it. It was filmed in 1947, but not released until 10 June 1949 in the US and 11 December 1950 in the UK.

Lindfors also stars in Siegel’s No Time for Flowers (1952).

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7981

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