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Joseph H. lewis was a great director who could do wonderful films with little money. Maybe that was why Columbia's president Harry Cohn gave him so much freedom to work. So Dark is the Night is an almost noir entry about a French detective on vacation in a little town near Paris who investigates some murders which he was somehow involved. A short and objective cheap movie that does not hide the director's talent and gives Steve Geray a great role. People who want to make unexpensive movies should know this gem.

Remarkable film which it is almost impossible to rate or review, unless I guess, you hate it and think that it is irredeemable rubbish of the 1-3/10 kind. I can definitely sympathise with anyone deciding that this film is unlikable.

But it is probably an even more exaggerated example of Joseph H. Lewis' overly crafted, utterly fake, and fantasy infused interpretations of an inane, insipid and indolent b-movie script mounted on a 12 day day b-movie production cycle, than his 'My Name is Julia Ross' from the proceeding year.

This film is therefore an even greater display of all style and no substance than that somewhat more widely known offering.

Indeed, for a long time I thought that this European set semi noir Gothic psychological crime thriller actually was a deliberate fantasy Film in the vein of a folk story or fairy tale: my opinion to this effect was at it's hight when a hunchback villager makes a vivid appearance around the half way mark!

Gradually though I changed my mind and I concluded that this is a film where the interpretation of the material it is founded upon is so wide that almost the only thing reaching the screen is the directors vision and the photographers cinematography.

I'm effect the sense of fantasy and fairy tale is because the director has filmed a second film directly over the top of the bare scripts bare story and bare characters so that it's almost a bifocal film.

If you are a fan of this director, or of film experimentation, or of b-movie "magic" then this MIGHT be for you and I would recommend accordingly.

Personally I had to watch it twice to make sure that it wasn't just a load of rubbish inventively photographed.

At this stage I was still only minded to rate a 6/10 but in reflection I realised how nicely played the lead role is for a film where clearly the script must have been nearly pointless for the actors: for them it was the director and the cinematographer and the art director who mattered and not their character is written.

Secondly, after checking that this was indeed shot on a back lot of Columbia's in a matter of days; the conjuring up of the material impression of a French village (complete with bizarre characters.) is staggeringly efficiently and efficaciously done.

So I upped my rating to a 7/10. My qualified recommendation stands.

So Dark The Night poses a tough challenge: It's very hard to write about it in any detail without ruining it for those who haven't yet seen it. Since it remains quite obscure, that includes just about everybody. The movie will strike those familiar with its director Joseph H. Lewis' better known titles in the noir cycle – Gun Crazy, The Big Combo, even My Name Is Julia Ross, which in its brevity it resembles – as an odd choice.

For starters, the bucolic French countryside serves as its setting. Steven Geray, a middle-aged detective with the Surété in Paris, sets out for a vacation in the village of Ste. Margot (or maybe Margaux). Quite unexpectedly, he finds himself falling in love with the inkeepers' daughter (Micheline Cheirel), even though she's betrothed to a rough-hewn local farmer. But the siren song of life in Paris is hard to resist, so she agrees to marry him, despite the disparity in their ages, which inevitably becomes the talk of the town.

But on the night of their engagement party, she fails to return to the inn. Soon, a hunchback finds her body by the river. Her jealous, jilted lover is the logical suspect, but he, too, is found dead. Then anonymous notes threaten more deaths, which come to pass. For the first time in his career, the bereaved Geray finds himself stumped....

A particularly weak script all but does the movie in; it plays like bad Cornell Woolrich crossed with The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. But Lewis does this creaky vehicle proud. He takes his time near the beginning, but then the story – and the storytelling – gain momentum (alas, just about the time the script breaks an axle). Burnett Guffey lighted and photographed the film, with an intriguing leitmotif of peering out of and peeping into windows; there's also an effective score by Hugo Friedhofer, who supplied aural menace to many noirs. A good deal of talent has been lavished on So Dark The Night, but at the end it boils down to not much more than a gimmick – and not a very good gimmick at that. It's a one-trick pony of a movie.

STEVEN GERAY never got to play the leads in most of his films at Columbia, but he gets his chance here as a detective badly in need of a vacation in the French countryside. As in all such stories, he has no time to relax because he's soon involved in a double murder.

The trouble with the film, for the most part directed stylishly by Joseph H. Lewis, is that it takes too long to become absorbed in the plot involving a double murder. The bucolic country scenes never develop the characters fully and they don't really come alive until we're midway through the story. And then, as the detective begins to study the case, the plot takes a twist in another direction entirely.

It's a minor entry in the films that were taking on more psychological tones in the early '40s, but I can't say there's anything memorable about the characters or the script. But for a film produced on a shoestring budget, it's a lot better than you might expect.

What starts as a particularly crass representation of French life complete with 'American Franglais' accents becomes curiously appealing after about half an hour.

Once the melodramatic chestnut of 'the old man and younger women' is dispensed with and we are thrust into the meaty matter of multiple homicide, the drama draws us in. It is here that the two-dimensional characters actually work for the film; is it the jealous widower, the protective father or the ambitious mother? Could be!

The acting is fairly average, the budget is non-existent and this movie is by no means a classic. So what saves it then? Well, its main point of interest is its conclusion.

The film's ending, although rather clumsily handled is genuinely surprising, mainly because of the film's date and that Hollywood convention rarely allows the generic rules to be broken in such a way. It's one of those movies that you watch in the afternoon when you're doling it or are off sick - I gave it six just for the ending alone.