Long Night

In A Long Night, a worker and a no-longer-very-young magician compete for the love of a young woman. The latter resorts to the most shameless lies to eliminate his rival, who kills him in a fit of rage. Then he locks himself in a hotel room, besieged by the police and recalls the whole story in flashback.

The Long Night (1947) starring Henry Fonda, Barbara Bel Geddes, Vincent Price,  Ann Dvorak

Product Description 

SYNOPSIS: The credits fade onto a blind man tapping his way down the sidewalk,he enters a dingy boarding house and hears a shot fired in one of the upstairs bedrooms. A door opens from audience POV. A man tumbles out of the door and falls, slides and slithers down two flights of stairs and is dead when he hits the bottom. Then follows nearly 100 minutes of flashback and flashbacks-within-flashbacks about a veteran returing from the war, tired and disillusioned, only to find that he girl he loves has lied to him about her relationship with another man, and that man is sadistic, boastful and tauntful. …The Long Night (1947)

Editorial review of  Long Night courtesy of Amazon.com

An exciting rediscovery from the studio vaults, The Long Night is an emotionally gripping, visually dynamic film noir, in which Henry Fonda, at the peak of his career, delivers an unforgettable performance. Presented in an intricate web of flashbacks, The Long Night follows the fractured thoughts of Joe Adams (Henry Fonda), a factory worker pinned inside his third-floor apartment after gunning down a mysterious, dapper gentleman (Vincent Price). Joe’s memories (often containing flashbacks within flashbacks) reconstruct the events leading up to the shooting, revealing his romance with a quiet young girl (Barbara Bel Geddes), his less romantic involvement with an emotionally calloused showgirl (Ann Dvorak), and the varied twists of fate that drove Joe to murder.

In staging this remake of Marcel Carne’s Le Jour se leve (France, 1939), the producers of The Long Night imported not only the story but the look of poetic realism that made the original so haunting. Production designer Eugene Lourie and cinematographer Sol Polito created a shadowy wonderland, recreating broad exteriors in the controlled environment of the studio, replete with enormous sets, miniature factories and some ingenious cases of visual sleight-of-hand. At once dismal and magical, the world of The Long Night is unlike anything Hollywood had yet imagined, and laid the groundwork for the dark and gritty (but highly stylized) imagery that became the hallmark of film noir.

Cast of characters

• Henry Fonda (My Darling Clementine; The Big Street) … Joe Adams
• Barbara Bel Geddes (The Five Pennies; Born to Be Bad) … Jo Ann
• Vincent Price (The Last Man on Earth; The House on Haunted Hill (1958)) … Maximilian the Great
• Ann Dvorak (Scarface; Merrily We Live) … Charlene
• Howard Freeman (The Time of Your Life) … Sheriff Ned Meade
• Moroni Olsen (Mildred Pierce) … Chief of Police Bob McManus
• Elisha Cook Jr. (Stranger on the Third Floor; The Maltese Falcon) … Frank Dunlap
• Queenie Smith (The Great Rupert) … Mrs. Tully
• David Clarke … Bill Pulanski
• Charles McGraw (His Kind of Woman) … Stevens – Policeman
• Melinda Byron … Peggy (as Patty King)
• Davis Roberts … Freddie (as Robert A. Davis)

Trivia for  The Long Night

• In the scene where Maximillian (Vincent Price) joins Jo Ann on the bus, a poster advertising “Dr.Pearce’s Baking Powder” – the first commercial cream of tartar baking powder – can be seen behind them.  This was created by Vincent Price’s grandfather, and made his fortune
• Film debut of Barbara Bel Geddes.