Au milieu de la nuit

Screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky adapted his own play about an elderly workaholic (Fredric March, in a stupendous performance) who reaches out to a beautiful woman half his age...but she's got problems of her own, beginning with her shaky self-confidence. Their sometimes-rocky, sometimes-tender courtship provides the basis for this lovely film. As the sad beauty, Kim Novak has seldom been better (it's amazing that professional critics at the time failed to see the growth in Novak as an actress here, focusing all their attention on March, who indeed is terrific). Great N.Y.C. locations, fine support from the always-reliable Lee Grant. Well worth-seeing. *** from **** (Relatively forgotten for years, the movie made its DVD debut August 2010 as part of a Novak collection.)

Solid drama of older March falling for young insecure Kim. Both leads are excellent and present their flawed but decent characters simply. Kim was in her peak years and having just come off of Vertigo is a neurotic mess, probably a spill over from that experience but it fits her part. The people in their lives are shown in dark tones, a little heavily so, perhaps to illustrated the disapproval of society to such a relationship in the 50's. It does lend a heavy air to the film though since almost without exception they are a smothering and cruel bunch. Paddy Chayevsky's plays are usually intense emotional exercises but Mann keeps a steady hand on the tiller and the actors make the troubled lovers plight poignant.

Many years ago I caught this movie on the "Bill Kennedy at the movies" show. It was the film that turned me on to Frederick March and Kim Novak. Both were powerful in there roles. The subject matter, older man younger woman hasn't really been explored in film to the extent I think it warrants. "Lolita is another such film, but I'm hard pressed to come up with others. I would love to see this film again after all those years to see if it still holds up to my standard of excellence, but alas, it seems to have dropped off the face of the earth. I've watched for it on TCM and AMC, but I've never seen it listed. I don't know who owns the rights to it, but hope someday to see this film again.

that I taped years ago and watch every so often. It's a good thing I did as it is not yet available on either VHS or DVD. The first time I ever saw this movie on television was way back when I was a teenager and I was babysitting. It's one of those movies where each time I watch it I see things I missed before; either in someone's performance or in the way a scene is filmed or something else. Fredric March is just flawless as a self-made businessman and widower in his fifties and Kim Novak is edgy as the beautiful but damaged and insecure young woman working at his company. Everyone calls her somnambulistic, but in this movie I could feel her nerves jump right through her skin at times. I thought she was very good in the role. I have to mention that one of my favorite characters in it is the son-in-law, Jack, played by Martin Balsam--a fantastic actor, of course, but he is so great in this, that, although he's not in many scenes--he just knocks me over every time I watch it. The characters all sound so true to life, of course, because they were written by Paddy Chayefsky. I found the subject matter fascinating and believable and although the standout performance was definitely that of Fredric March, playing all facets of a mature man, all actors involved were right on the mark. When WILL they make this movie available on VHS or DVD? My home-made tape looks crummy, I admit it! (And the movie is hardly ever shown on television any more) Anyway, this is one of my favorite 100 films.

"Middle of the Night" was a surprise for me both before and after I saw it on Turner Classic Movies on a dreary Sunday morning. Before because the subject matter made me raise an eyebrow, and after, because I was genuinely shocked at how involved and absorbed I became in the story and how it made me feel a little guilty about my beforehand perceptions.

The movie stars two of the cinema's finest—Fredric March and Kim Novak—as lovers separated in age by thirty years. Novak is March's secretary. He owns a big business, his wife has died, and his children are all married and having families of their own. Novak, by contrast, has divorced her husband of three years and is still trying to recover from it as well as a feeling of not being wanted or loved. March comforts her as almost a father figure, they become friends, and then despite protests and age differences, become romantically involved.

Now the premise of this actually had me a little creeped out at beginning. And there were some parts in the first third of the movie that made me shudder a bit, but immediately after that, the story become involving and beautiful and sad and just the opposite of what I was expecting. Yes, Fredric March and Kim Novak aren't exactly like two peas in a pod in terms as a screen couple, but that was the psychology and genius of this movie. True, the idea of a man romancing a woman thirty years his junior seems a little…off-putting, but the way the filmmakers and performers work it, it becomes genuinely powerful.

March is not made over into being some kind of a creepy middle-aged sexual predator. And Novak is not presented as a freeloader or a sex object. Rather, these two characters are worked into being completely sentimental and sympathetic human beings and well into the story, I could actually believe they were in love and I feared for the outcome of their relationship. Now those creepy feelings I had? That was personified by the supporting characters. Novak's family saw March as a middle-aged sexual predator and March's saw Novak as a slattern out to get herself into a big home. The supporting characters essentially represent what the audience—including me—thought about the movie at the beginning and about the premise. And believe me, I felt guilty when I realized this. The movie works because it's not about lust or sex, but about love and affection and the irresistible longing for companionship. And that's why the relationship between March and Novak becomes moving. They say "I love you" to each other and we believe they are saying it from the deepest regions of their hearts and souls. They don't want each other for their physical appearances, they want each other for something that lies beneath the surface. And that is what love is.

Performances all around are excellent. Fredric March, one of the screen's legends, is excellent at creating a character portrait of a grieving, lonely man. And Kim Novak is even better at generating sympathy with her portrayal of a woman seeking love for who she is. These are typically the roles that Kim Novak was given during her golden era in the 1950s (other roles include "Picnic", "Pal Joey", and of course, her best film "Vertigo") and she played them well, partially because she was able, more in some cases and less than others, play herself and what she wanted people to see of her: a human being and not just something pretty to look at and to want lustily. Kim Novak is my personal favorite actress and one of the most underrated actresses who ever lived.

In the end, although I was at first unsure if I could approve of a movie like "Middle of the Night", I am not afraid to admit at the end, having seen it in its entirety, that I was amazed and absorbed by the story. I believed in the romance between the two characters, I was not uneasy looking at them together, and by the end, I felt really sick in my stomach from all of the sympathy that my heart had generated in the past two hours. The movie is rare and hard to find, perhaps because its subject matter isn't that all appealing *on the surface*, but the movie is well worth your time if you ever have the opportunity to see it.