''The Long Night'' is a 1947 American

film noir Film noir (; ) is a style of Cinema of the United States, Hollywood Crime film, crime dramas that emphasizes cynicism (contemporary), cynical attitudes and motivations. The 1940s and 1950s are generally regarded as the "classic period" of Ameri ...

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

drama Drama is the specific Mode (literature), mode of fiction Mimesis, represented in performance: a Play (theatre), play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on Radio drama, radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a g ...

directed by

Anatole Litvak Anatoly Mikhailovich Litvak (10 May 1902 – 15 December 1974), commonly known as Anatole Litvak, was a Russian-American filmmaker. Born to Jewish parents in Kiev, he began his theatrical training at age 13 in Saint Petersburg, St. Petersburg, ...

and produced by

RKO Pictures RKO Radio Pictures Inc., commonly known as RKO Pictures or simply RKO, is an American film production and distribution company, historically one of the major film studios, "Big Five" film studios of Cinema of the United States, Hollywood's Clas ...

. 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), ''Les Visiteurs du Soi ...

. The drama stars

Henry Fonda Henry Jaynes Fonda (May 16, 1905 – August 12, 1982) was an American actor whose career spanned five decades on Broadway theatre, Broadway and in Hollywood. On screen and stage, he often portrayed characters who embodied an everyman image. Bo ...

Barbara Bel Geddes Barbara Bel Geddes (October 31, 1922 – August 8, 2005) was an American stage and screen Actor, actress, artist, and children's author whose career spanned almost 5 decades. She was best known for her starring role as Miss Ellie Ewing in th ...

Vincent Price Vincent Leonard Price Jr. (May 27, 1911 – October 25, 1993) was an American actor. He was known for his work in the horror film genre, mostly portraying villains. He appeared on stage, television, and radio, and in more than 100 films. Price ...

and Ann Dvorak. 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 greenhouse. 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 tells Joe that he is Jo Ann's long-lost father. He claims to have sought her out due to guilt and is now so attached to her that he would not want to lose her to someone like Joe. Jo Ann fiercely denies that Max is in any way related to her. She tells him about how she was picked out of the audience one night and brought on stage to take part in the act, and was then pursued by Max, who sought a relationship. She insists that she has had to physically fend off his romantic advances. Jo Ann and Charlene both 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 who to trust. One day, Max arrives at Joe's shabby boarding house room and demands that Joe leave Jo Ann alone. During the ensuing argument Joe pushes Max halfway out 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 Charlene, 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 * Ann Dvorak as Charlene * Howard Freeman as Sheriff Ned Meade * Moroni Olsen as Chief of Police * Elisha Cook Jr. as Frank Dunlap * Queenie Smith as Mrs. Tully * David Clarke as Bill Pulanski * Charles McGraw 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 second movement of

Beethoven Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. He is one of the most revered figures in the history of Western music; his works rank among the most performed of the classical music repertoire ...

's Seventh Symphony.

Reception

Box office

According to '' Variety'', 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, also known as biota, refers to matter that has biological processes, such as Cell signaling, signaling and self-sustaining processes. It is defined descriptively by the capacity for homeostasis, Structure#Biological, organisation, met ...

'' 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 (1947 film), 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 English-language crime drama films