Thursday 4 April 2024

Night Unto Night (1949 Don Siegel)

I rather enjoyed this despite its 5.8 IMDB Rating. A woman - let's call her Viveca Lindfors - emerges crying from a somewhat creepy Florida beach house (and by that I mean a house on the sea shore) and bumps into doctor Ronald Reagan, who's come to look it over with a view to renting it - the meet cute. It turns out she is still hearing her dead husband talking to her, whilst he has the dreaded Hollywood Mysterious Illness. He quickly befriends neighbour Broderick Crawford and wife Rosemary DeCamp, and receives the unwelcome attention of her sister Osa Massen, who's a really vile character with an unaccountable Danish accent. Lillian Yarbo is the faithful maid and Erksine Sanford appears as a doctor. It has a marvellously inconclusive ending.

It's beautifully shot by J. Peverall Marley (Siegel likes to track in a lot, so it's a mobile camera) and benefits from a fine score from Franz Waxman, orchestrated by Leonid Raab.



Sanford and Massen, who's had three too many





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