Everything Happens at Night

Darryl F. Zanuck cut the budget on this Sonja Henie vehicle Everything Happens At Night. Sonja is confined to only one skating sequence and the ccent on the antics of Ray Milland and Robert Cummings pursuing Sonja and a story.

Milland and Cummings are rival reporters for British and American newspapers and in Switzerland both recognize Maurice Moscovitch a peace activist and Nobel Prize winner thought assassinated by the Nazis.

Like Clark Gable and Walter Pidgeon from the MGM film Too Hot To Handle from the previous year when pursuing both a story and Myrna Loy, Milland and Cummings get their hormones intertwined completely with their job. The two really act like school boys over Sonja.

Unlike the MGM film, Zanuck kept this 20th Century Fox product on board with reality. Everything Happens At Night is one of the first films out there to identify Nazi Germany as a villain.

With a short running time Everything Happens At Night keeps a good pace with a vital message laced with comedy.

Like all of Sonja Henie's vehicles, this fun-filled 1939 Fox whimsy works like a cheery blend of comedy, romance, and ice skating dances. The main difference is that the plot is less focused on the skating scenes than the suspense and romance concerning Henie and her two leading men, Robert Cummings & Ray Milland.

I was surprised to see "Everything Happens at Night" has only one skating scene for Henie, quite an aberration considering that most of her movies are fraught with dances and skating. Cummings and Milland play two competing reporters that are sent to a small Swiss town to investigate a Nobel Prize winning commentator who is believed to be dead. Both find themselves falling for his daughter played by Henie. Cummings is a bit eccentric and rowdy while Milland comes off as a serious and straight-forward sort of fellow. They exchange roles courting her. Their scenes are irresistibly funny, charming, and merry. Then all of a sudden the movie becomes a spy thriller when a band of Gestapo villains arrive in the Swiss village to wreak havoc.

"Everything Happens at Night" is my fourth Henie after "Sun Valley Serenade"(1941), "One in a Million"(1936) and "My Lucky Star"(1938) and all rank as her very best.

Two reporters, one American (Robert Cummings) and one British (Ray Milland), track a presumed dead Nobel Prize winner Dr. Norden (Maurice Moscovitch) to a remote Swiss village. They both fall in love with Louise (Sonja Henie), who they don't realize is actually the doctor's daughter.

This was the first Sonja Henie film I've seen, and while it as an inconsequential piece of fluff, it was enjoyable. Henie has an engaging screen presence and Ray Milland is charming as always. Robert Cummings is really annoying though.

Henie only gets one skating number, an excellent number to the Blue Danube Waltz. The rather serious script, which somehow manages to involve the Gestapo, is rather bad at places, but it's all good fun.

Rival reporters compete for the love of a girl (Sonja Henie) and search for a Nobel Prize winner who's in hiding in "Everything Happens at Night," a 1939 film also starring Ray Milland and Robert Cummings.

The two men are hot on the trail of a Dr. Norden, a man supposed to be dead but actually alive in a small Swiss village hiding from various political factions who are after him. While there, they both meet pretty Louise, a young woman who's the caretaker for an old man. She also knows how to skate.

This is more of a dramatic turn for Henje. It only has one big number for the multiple Olympic gold winner. Today, Henje's skating may not look like much, but she was very musical, had great speed, excellent spins, and danced on her toes on ice like a ballerina. She was a dazzling entertainer.

The comedy is provided by Milland and Cummings, both of whom are very charming and funny. For some reason, a lot of people slam Cummings. He wasn't a compelling dramatic actor; his foray was comedy, which he did well.

Milland looks quite handsome and he flirts beautifully: "6'3, blue eyes, 28 years old" he murmurs in Henie's ear with that knockout accent - pretty sexy!

As for Henje, acting wasn't her thing; she was a specialty performer, and one keeps waiting for her to do her specialty. Instead, she spends a lot of time skiing up and down mountains.

I'm not even sure she skied - Otto Lang, who recently died at 98, donned a blond wig and skied for her in "Thin Ice," and in "It Happened in Sun Valley," her stand-in for skiing was a 14-year old boy. So someone kept busy, and it wasn't Sonja.

"Everything Happens at Night" isn't much of a movie. People expect a light, thin story from a Henje film since she'll be skating a lot. Well, the story is thin but it's a comedy that turns dramatic when the Nazis show up in the Swiss village looking for the doctor. I thought Switzerland was a neutral country - wouldn't this man be safe once he was there?

Sonja should have stuck to films like "Thin Ice," "One in a Million," and "Second Fiddle" which were more her speed. In short, not a great movie and not a great Sonja Henie movie.

Sonja Henie is always watchable and a marvel at ice skating, but 'Everything Happens at Night' is one of her weaker films along with 'One in a Million' and 'It's a Pleasure'.

What there is of the ice skating is dazzling and full of grace, flawlessly performed by Henie, but there isn't enough of it. 'Everything Happens at Night' is saved mainly by the funny and charming performances of Robert Cummings and particularly Ray Milland. The humour is sporadic, but is entertaining when it's there.

The production values are suitably elegant and beautifully captured by camera and the music complements very well indeed.

Henie however, despite dancing/skating flawlessly, shows limitations as an actress, a big problem for a role heavier in the drama department than the ice skating. Apart from some nice humour, the script is very limp, while the direction is stodgy and the story is as thin as ice, sometimes pedestrian and implausible.

Overall, watchable but a lesser film with Sonja Henie. 5/10 Bethany Cox