ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT

New Zealand Listener, Volume 10, Issue 238, 14 January 1944, Page 12

ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT

(Warner Bros.)

ND a long-drawn-out night it was, too, with our little man thinking enviously of his chair by the fire and the bedtime stories he could have been

telling his little ones. Perhaps it was really the length of the film that was the trouble (it lasted one and three-quarter hours), because you can’t get past the names in that cast: Humphrey Bogart, Peter Lorre, Conrad Veidt, and Kaaren Verne. There they all were: Bogart at his best, Lorre as soft and sibilant as ever and very insinuating, and Veidt more Nazi, more commanding than one ever expected him to become in the days of The (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) Third Floor Back; and Kaaren Verne, in the clutches of the Nazi agents, adequate, quite adequate, No. The fact is the story is full of tall fishes, red herrings, and overgrown situations, Mr, Bogart is epparently a city thug, a gangster of the kindly kind, who has friends as well as enemies, all of whom know him as Gloves Donohue. But Mr. Donohue is fond of cheesecakes, and his fondness leads him to ask questions about the death of an old man who made the best cheese-cakes in New York. (Actually, the audience know all along who killed the old baker-they see Mr. Lorre do it very efficiently), When his questions lead him to a night club, it’s no surprise to find the beautiful Kaaren Verne singing there under the eye and the thumb of the persuasive Mr, Lorre; and only a slight surprise to find Gloves Donohue careless enough to leave one of his gloves behind with the corpse he found ahead of the police. After that, however, we are surprised a number of times; for instance when Gloves Donohue and his friend attend a full meeting of all the Nazi agents in New York (dozens of them, all as. guttural as you like), by the simple expedient of knocking a couple of newcomers on the head, dumping them round the corner, and walking in, heiling cheerfully, with their passes ... and for instance when Mr. Lorre looks surprised at the tough treatment handed out to him by Bosé Veidt at the end. Surely, Peter, you knew he’d shoot you as quick as look at you? No, apparently not. But he does. And when Gloves has disposed of Conrad, and his thugs have disposed of all the other Nazis, there remains only the shouting, and good old Gloves is free to pursue his happy tribute-strewn pathway round the night-clubs and the Tacecourses. ..,. Well, that’s how Hollywood deals with the Fifth Column menace all through one night in New York City.