Maybe one of these fine days I might get to see the French film, Le Jour Se Leve that The Long Night is based on that starred Jean Gabin and Arletty. Just reading the user comments from that board kind of tells me where The Long Night went wrong.
Henry Fonda for one thing is horribly miscast in this film. This was a part better played by someone like John Garfield or Montgomery Clift. Either of those two might have better showed the angst that Fonda was feeling as Vincent Price ruins the woman of his dreams.
The title The Long Night refers to Fonda holed up in a fourth top floor apartment after he shoots Vincent Price. The film opens with Price staggering out of Fonda's room at the boarding house and falling dead at the top of the stairs. The police investigate and Fonda shoots at them. They settle in for a long siege overnight. The reasons that led up to the homicide unfold in flashbacks.
Price plays a Snidely Whiplash type villain. He's a nightclub entertainer with a magic act. Ann Dvorak is his many times around the track assistant, not a few of those times with Price and Barbara Bel Geddes is the young girl who Fonda falls for but Price seduces. Price overacts outrageously to cover the script defects.
The problem with adapting Le Jour Se Leve to the American cinema seems to be the Production Code still firmly in place. What they could show in France, they could not show here. Made for an absurd plot.
This and The Fugitive are Henry Fonda's two flop films in his post World War II period before going to Broadway and Mister Roberts. I'm sure he would love to have forgotten The Long Night.
Henry Fonda for one thing is horribly miscast in this film. This was a part better played by someone like John Garfield or Montgomery Clift. Either of those two might have better showed the angst that Fonda was feeling as Vincent Price ruins the woman of his dreams.
The title The Long Night refers to Fonda holed up in a fourth top floor apartment after he shoots Vincent Price. The film opens with Price staggering out of Fonda's room at the boarding house and falling dead at the top of the stairs. The police investigate and Fonda shoots at them. They settle in for a long siege overnight. The reasons that led up to the homicide unfold in flashbacks.
Price plays a Snidely Whiplash type villain. He's a nightclub entertainer with a magic act. Ann Dvorak is his many times around the track assistant, not a few of those times with Price and Barbara Bel Geddes is the young girl who Fonda falls for but Price seduces. Price overacts outrageously to cover the script defects.
The problem with adapting Le Jour Se Leve to the American cinema seems to be the Production Code still firmly in place. What they could show in France, they could not show here. Made for an absurd plot.
This and The Fugitive are Henry Fonda's two flop films in his post World War II period before going to Broadway and Mister Roberts. I'm sure he would love to have forgotten The Long Night.