Endless Night

"Endless Night" follows working-class freewheeling chauffeur Michael (Hywel Bennett) who falls in love with a billionaire heiress Ellie (Hayley Mills). The two marry, and build a large estate on property in the English countryside known as Gypsy's Acre, which is purported by locals to be cursed land. After Ellie's relative Greta (Britt Ekland) arrives to stay, a series of bizarre events unfold, including ominous encounters with an elderly gypsy woman who roams the property.

Based on the Agatha Christie novel, director Sidney Gilliat takes the meat of Christie's novel and puts unique twinges on it that are reminiscent of Hitchcock (Bernard Herrmann's spooky score understates this). The film is admittedly slow, especially in exposition, and there are few quote-unquote thrills to be had, but I found this film strangely compelling in spite of its odd pacing.

There is a consistent sense of unease that permeates nearly every scene, although it's difficult to put your finger on what is exactly the cause. The photography in the film is fantastic, capturing the rolling landscapes and the cloudy skies surrounding the manor; this is punctuated by subtle scares that come in the form of various figures lurking below on the hillsides or in the woods, almost like indistinct figures in a painting. The film is at times reminiscent of English Gothic in its aesthetics, even though the house itself is very much "retro '70s" in both style and furnishings.

Solid performances from Hywel Bennett and Hayley Mills really shine here, with Mills being especially memorable as a good natured girl who happens to be a billionaire ("world's sixth richest!"). Britt Ekland is also great as the stalwart and fawning relative— her performance really comes full circle in the finale, which provides her the bulk of the role's dynamics, and she handles it fabulously. The conclusion to the film is fairly routine by contemporary standards, although I can honestly say that I didn't see the plot twists coming, so props to Christie and the filmmakers' handling of the material— I was definitely had by the film.

Overall, "Endless Night" is an enjoyable and well-acted picture that seems to have been forgotten in time. It is too slow to qualify as a full-blooded thriller, but there are tinges of a British psychothriller here with some genuinely bizarre and eerie moments that stand out among effective cinematography and a disquieting score. In spite of the film's lackluster pacing, it is unexpectedly transfixing, and manages to hold one's attention until the head twisting finale. 7/10.

I won't say it's a bad film, but I have to believe the liberties taken with the adaptation of the story go well beyond the nudity and modern setting. (I will say that the house with the remote-controlled indoor swimming pool in the living room was a bit over the top.)

I will confess that I did not guess the direction the plot would take, but what was so disappointing was the profusion of loose ends and entirely pointless characters. Agatha didn't usually write them that way - everyone ended up with a role in the outcome of the story. Here we are presented with in-laws, neighbors, family friends, and a mysterious old woman --- all of whom have nothing at all to do with the resolution of the story. Most of them could have been omitted entirely and the story would have been essentially unchanged.

My DVD even featured an editing error: about 10 seconds of the film repeat precisely (when the girl's parents are observed getting back into their car to leave.)

There is also a broken window that is never explained, a ghostly appearance that is never accounted for or revisited, a car is observed to take an unusually long to get somewhere - but we are never given the significance. An architect seems to know things the audience does not -- yet no explanation is offered of how he knows them.

Like Agatha's best writing, characters and clues and complications pile up... but then they are inexplicably thrown away in favor of an unexpected, yet rather anticlimactic resolution.

Endless Night is one of those movies that is hugely flawed, and yet it sticks in the mind unlike many more polished movies. Extremely slow paced for much of it's length and with several sequences that feel almost unnecessary, and even a few which just seem wierd, the film than delivers a true knock out of a twist which makes one realise how well the story has been constructed. For this reason, in some respect it's more satisfying to watch the second time even if one is no longer surprised, because one can notice all the little clues that have been put in ,and many of the previously mentioned unnecessary or wierd bits seem more essential. There is, though, one huge red herring that seems rather pointless.

This was the last of the Hywell Bennett/Hayley Mills collaborations for the Boulting Brothers and it is possibly their most interesting. Cast are all excellent ,including George Sanders in one of his final roles, and this is just as well since the film is indeed extremely talky. The alternately eerie and romantic Bernard Herrmann score is very memorable, although they could have made sure Mills' singing voice [obviously dubbed] sounded like her normal voice.

Many will be unsatisfied with this film ,but try it if you fancy a somewhat different kind of thriller, even it's only really a thriller in the final half hour!

True-blue Agatha Christie fans know better than anyone that the creator of Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot did not always write crime-solving procedural. Endless Night, published in 1968, is a perfect example of the moody, psychological thriller Christie sometimes explored, particularly in the late years of her career. This 1972 adaptation, scripted and directed by seasoned British filmmaker Sidney Gilliat, is indeed a strange duck: a compelling tale of small, unsettling phenomena and events, but with no defining mystery, no apparent crime to pull the details together--not until quite late in the story, that is. Hayley Mills and Hywel Bennett, partnered together in several films (The Family Way, Twisted Nerve) during the 1960s and '70s, play an American heiress and an underemployed London chauffeur who marry and move into a dream house designed for them by a world-class architect (Per Oscarsson). In short order, things begin to get mighty weird. A crazy old woman stomps around the couple's property, whispering ambiguous warnings. The bride's nuisance of a sister (Britt Ekland) moves in, and a handful of disapproving relatives keep popping up to belittle the hero. Where this is all leading is entirely unexpected--Christie and Gilliat really have us falling without a parachute for a while--yet it's exciting and tragic all at once. Nice performances all around, with special admiration for Oscarsson's role as the dying architect.

Around 45 years ago, when I was just a young lad, Hayley Mills was my favorite actress, and her 1962 film "In Search of the Castaways" was my favorite film, but between this and that, I don't think I've seen Hayley in anything since 1965's "That Darn Cat." How nice, then, to see her, the other night, at age 26 in the 1972 British film "Endless Night," and to realize what a nubile nymph my old flame had turned into later in life! In this adaptation of a 1967 Agatha Christie novel, Hayley plays Ellie Thomsen, the 6th richest girl in the world, who, after one date with pretty-boy chauffeur Michael (excellently portrayed by Welsh actor Hywel Bennett), elopes with him and builds his dream house in the Herts countryside. It is hard to figure out what words best describe "Endless Night." It is not really a horror movie, or a love story, or a thriller, but certainly does have elements of all these types. The picture IS remarkably atmospheric, in no small measure due to yet another wonderfully evocative score by the great Bernard Herrmann, and should manage to baffle most viewers who are trying to figure out just where the story line is going. Besides the fine work by its two leads, veterans George Sanders (here in one of his last roles, and playing what his character self-describes as a "desiccated old poop") and Lois Maxwell add sterling support, and even Britt Ekland turns in a convincing performance as Ellie's tutor/companion. Throw in some gorgeous scenery in the Herts and Positano countrysides, a surprise final quarter hour that manages to subvert everything we thought we knew, and two or three mild scares and you've got yourself one very interesting entertainment. Kudos, indeed, to writer/director Sidney Gilliat! I just hope that I'm not foolish enough to wait another 40 years before watching Hayley Mills in another picture. Perhaps it's time for me to finally check out Hayley and Hywel in 1968's "Twisted Nerve"...IF it ever gets released on DVD!