The Long Night (1947)

Noir Restored:
A Rediscovered American Classic
The Long Night (1947)
Studio: RKO • 97 min B&W • AR 1.33:1 • US: 28 May 1947
Re-release: Kino Video (Sep 2006)
Series: Film Noir: The Dark Side of Hollywood (5-DVD)
Starring: Henry Fonda, Barbara Bel Geddes, Vincent Price, Ann Dvorak
Dir: Anatole Litvak

The Long Night qualifies as a genuine film noir: the anti-hero (Fonda), a recently returned serviceman from WWII, shoots and kills a travelling magician (Price) in the opening scene. In a series of moody flashbacks, intertwined with the events of the next few hours spent trapped and pinned down by the police on the top floor of a walk-up hotel, we learn of his love of the good innocent young woman (Geddes, in her debut role) and somewhat less innocent, but also good, sometime Price side-kick showgirl (Dvorak).

Dimitri Tiomkin provides a capably taut, thematic score (Beethoven deserves a co-authorship); Tiomkin was a leading star composer at the time notable for several Capra films; he eventually won 3 Oscars out of 16 nominations.

Sol Polito is among the classic brooding cinematographers although his career stretched back to 1914. From I was a Fugutive in a Chain Gang, ‘G’ Men and The Petrified Forest in the 1930s through A Stolen Life, Cloak and Dagger and Sorry, Wrong Number in the 1940s, he delivers the goods in this film with a slightly dream-like stylized “Anytown, USA” and memorable shots of Fonda in the mirror and looking through a window.

John Wexley, a name you probably don’t know, wrote the screenplay but was black-listed shortly after the film’s release. He was an admitted member of the Communist Party, spoke German, and collaborated with Bertolt Brecht in Fritz Lang’s Hangmen Also Die (also included in this set).

Fonda was also already a major star having made You Only Live Once, Jezebel, The Grapes of Wrath, The Ox-Bow Incident and My Darling Clementine. Wearing a recession-style cap and confused pout in the present, and good guy enthusiasm in the flashbacks, Fonda draws us in with his basic core values even though we are introduced to him as a murderer.

Price does his smarmy evil snake-oil salesman as magician Maximillian, a stronger and more dangerous baddy than Shelby Carpenter in Laura; he has to be since he’s shot and killed in the opening sequence. In a sly reference to his sexuality, in one confrontational scene, Price and Fonda are in a bar verbally sparring over their interest in Bel Geddes; Fonda is handed a manly beer, and Price a girly drink by a sarcastic waitress.

The film is actually a “re-make” of great French director Marcel Carné’s Le jour se lève (Just Before The Dawn) and the DVD extras demonstrate some of the slavish reincarnations. The disk also features an interesting behind-the-scenes illustrated essay. Remastered from the 35mm nitrate negative, it looks gorgeous throughout, save for brief sections, most notably the final couple of minutes, where the original negs must have been lost.

Recommended viewing for noir aficionados as well as lovers of American film of the period.