The Long Night ** (1947, Henry Fonda, Barbara Bel Geddes, Vincent Price, Ann Dvorak) – Classic Movie Review 7756

Using the original screenplay by Jacques Viot as a basis, director Anatole Litvak remakes the 1939 Jean Gabin French classic Le Jour se Lève [Daybreak] to much lesser effect in his 1947 RKO black and white film noir thriller The Long Night, despite a top star cast in Henry Fonda, Barbara Bel Geddes (in her film debut), Vincent Price and Ann Dvorak, and a fine visual style.

Fonda plays Joe Adams, who shoots Maximilian the Great (Price), who is dallying with his woman, and holes up waiting for the cops to find him as the police surround the apartment and a siege begins, with Joe unable to escape and yet refusing to surrender.

[Spoiler alert] All the emotion and poetic realism that made Marcel Carné’s film great are simply missing here, so all that is left is the unfolding of the melodrama in endless flashbacks, the quality of the acting and Sol Polito’s moody cinematography. On the downside also, Dimitri Tiomkin’s score wrongly tries to jolly things up and there is a silly happy ending.

Also in the cast are Queenie Smith, Elisha Cook Jr, Moroni Olsen, Howard Freeman, David Clarke and Charles McGraw.

The Long Night is directed by Anatole Litvak, runs 101 minutes, is made by Select Productions, released by RKO, is written by John Wexley, based on the 1939 screenplay by Jacques Viot, is shot in black and white by Sol Polito, is produced by Robert Hakim, Raymond Hakim and Anatole Litvak, is scored by Dimitri Tiomkin, and is designed by Eugene Lourie.

The plot, from the original French story by Jacques Viot, is unofficially reworked as Tomorrow Never Comes (1978), with Oliver Reed, Susan George and Raymond Burr.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7756

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