THE LONG NIGHT

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 446, 9 January 1948, Page 10

THE LONG NIGHT

(RKO-Radio) ENRY FONDA, who has occasions ally acted extremely well, suffers badly at the hands of Anatole Litvak (ditector) and John Wexley (script writer) in this confused and indecisive story of a reluctant murderer. He is not the only ohe who suffers. The entire cast take it on the chin, a good deal of the time, and most intelligent filmgoers will flinch occasionally as well. The film opens well enotgh-with a bang, in fact-when Fonda, as a young factory-hand depressed by doubts about his girl’s fidelity, is goaded into shooting the elderly waster who sows these doubts in his mind. In these first sequences the cameras are well handled and there is an ofganic unity in the scenes which promises well. But this promise doesn’t blossom in performance. The story is told by the flashback method, retufhing between times to Fonda’s upper roomm where he stiokes innumerable cigaréttes (it looked at one stage as if he would run out of matches), thinks aloud on the sound-track, or just sits in a sheltéred corner while the police spray the room with machine-gutt fire from the top of the building opposite. Each flashback leaves the story slightly moré muddled than it was before, and the only thing one is sure about in the end is that the poor young fellow will gét a New Deal at the hands of judge and jury-he finally gives himself, up-because he is a Veteran (possibly suffering ffom battle neurosis), and anyway it’s not only the French who understand critne passionel. Incidentally, the French ‘film classic, Le Jour Se Léve, was the source of the present film-story. Since I have not seen the French film, I cannot make invidious comparisons. But The Long Night is invidious enough on its own.