La grande nuit

As someone who knew John Barrymore Jr. 25 years ago, I was heartbroken to see him early in his aborted film career. Though not as charismatic as James Dean would be just a couple of years later, he was certainly Dean's prototype in The Big Night. Perhaps with a better film and a less disturbed personality, Barrymore might have been a working Hollywood actor for many years to come. Anyway, what director Joseph Losey lacked here was the Los Angeles cityscape he used to full effect that same year in his retelling of Fritz Lang's M. The Big Night was screaming for a location project on downtown L.A.'s seedy, beaten down Bunker Hill, a neighborhood of crumbling Victorian mansions and apartment buildings with vertiginous stairways that provided so much atmosphere to other films, such as Kiss Me Deadly, Criss-Cross, The Exiles and, yes, M. Instead, the movie is stage bound and hemmed in by sets that never look convincing. With its rambling "a night in the life" plot line, The Big Night needed another character: a dark city of real streets, background lights, rambling old house, and dingy clubs and bars. In other words, the kind of verisimilitude that transports the viewer into the protagonist's world. The back lot, unfortunately, was a poor stand-in.

Uneven film that at times seems to drift. Still, there are genuinely compelling moments, as when burly dad LeMaine (Foster, in a fine performance) meekly submits to a brutal cane lashing that had me cringing. Why he's submitting remains a puzzle until the end. Because of the beating, Dad's insecure son George (Barrymore Jr.) spends the movie's remainder trying to avenge his father.

Beneath the revenge narrative, however, is really a rite-of-passage story. For example, in a not very believable opening, a cringing George is pounded in humiliating fashion by his teenage peers. We're given no explanation, nor does actor Barrymore physically resemble an easy mark. It's not a promising beginning. Then, in a much more persuasive scene, Dad casts a slightly disapproving eye over his nervous son's birthday cake (symbolic of the story). So the kid must prove himself not only to Dad, but to himself.

It's not a tight screenplay. Events more or less simply follow one another, tied together by the theme of vengeance. Happily, however, the narrative doesn't drag. Actor Barrymore Jr. had a rather brief career despite the pedigree. One thing for sure, he's certainly different looking. With a mop of unruly hair and slightly crooked mouth, he's no glamor boy. Nonetheless, his looks are perfect for the role, such that, when he dons a sport coat and hat, he still looks like a kid trying to take a big step up. All in all, the young actor does pretty well in the kind of difficult role that would later go to James Dean. I also like a de-glamorized Joan Lorring, who's a good match for him. My one real complaint is the way Al Judge (St. John) is written. His behavior is so crude and ugly, it's hard thinking of him as a respected sports writer. A racketeer would have been more credible and easier, so the scriptwriters must have had a reason.

Then too, the screenwriters, Butler and Lardner Jr., along with director Losey, were all blacklisted during Hollywood's commie hunting period. I suspect it was their leftist leanings that are responsible for one of the film's most arresting sequences. George goes to a nightclub where a drop-dead beautiful black songstress (Mauri Lynn) entertains. Afterward, he encounters her outside and is compelled to compliment her looks and talent. She glows at the flattering remark. Trouble is his heartfelt momentum carries over to the unspoken qualification "for a Negro woman". She grasps the unfortunate hanging-in-the-air racial reference, and is reminded of her not-fully-equal status. Thus, disappointment clouds her former glow. It's a beautifully played moment and quite powerful in emotional impact. I wonder what happened to that fine actress.

Anyway, the movie does have a number of effective noir touches, especially George's twilight escape through LA's towering industrial district. It's a mysterious world so much larger than himself. All in all, the film is oddly memorable, thanks, I think, to Barrymore's unusual presence. I know I sought it out on DVD, lo, so many years after having first seen it in a theatre.

(In passing—the burly guy sitting next to Barrymore and Bourneuf ringside at the fights is Robert Aldrich, the great director of such classics as Kiss Me Deadly {1955} and Attack {1956}.)

From Losey's American feature films (a period which barely lasted four years, when he fell victim to political persecution) I had only previously watched his eccentric debut, THE BOY WITH GREEN HAIR (1948). The same year he made THE BIG NIGHT, a low-budget noir, he directed two other thrillers - THE PROWLER, Losey's own favorite from this early phase of his career and M, an Americanization of Fritz Lang's German masterpiece. Both these films promise to be a good deal more interesting than the ones I watched, and I hope I get the chance to view them someday...

Anyway, back to THE BIG NIGHT: in itself, it wasn't too bad but it didn't feel at all like a Losey film; perhaps that's because I'm not used to watching him dealing with an American setting - but it's still a minor film, not quite knowing where it's going and not even that compelling while it's on. The noir-ish atmosphere (courtesy of cinematographer Hal Mohr), however, is quite interestingly deployed - sometimes with an audacious psychological resonance, as in the nightclub scene where a riotous drum solo brings back to lead John Barrymore Jr. (looking more like Sean Penn than his matinée' idol father!) memories of his father's vicious beating at the hands of a crippled but influential sports columnist (an effectively sinister Howard St. John); the latter episode is actually a key scene, which sets the plot in motion and sends Barrymore - who witnessed father Preston Foster's humiliation and whom he idolized - seething with revenge in search of St. John.

The characters are largely stereotypes - caring bartender (Foster owns a bar), philosophical drunk pal, his bitter girlfriend (a rather spent Dorothy Comingore, who 10 years earlier had played Susan Alexander in CITIZEN KANE [1941]!), her good-girl sister who falls for and yearns to 'save' Barrymore, shady promoter Emil Meyer (a dry run for his memorable turn as a crooked cop in SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS [1957]), etc. - but the last act provides a couple of ironic twists involving the characters of Foster, St. John and the tragic fate of a woman they both loved in their own way.

The story here is revenge, more real-life based, a 1950's version of the crime of passion. A teenager's good-hearted father is beaten to a pulp by a gangster, so the kid invades the streets to get some payback. The father's not worried about the floor-wiping, which leads to a mystery behind the teen's mother, who skipped out on the family long ago, and a woman the father knows who has committed suicide.

Seeing this film, there's not much in terms of plot, but there are some notable scenes, particularly when the kid hears a beautiful night-club singer, becomes entranced, gets a chance to meet her on the street, and tells her how beautiful she is. Even though she's, you know,

black. The pain in the singer's face rends the poor kid, who was transported by her voice, but can't get beyond her skin color.

This film also has one of THE great lines ever in any film noir or any movie period, at least concerning the tragedy between a man and a woman, when there is love involved. There are no words more powerful or poignant, especially for a man who loves a woman beyond reason, who knows he has lost the love of his life. Unable to move on, to love or marry another woman after that one woman has destroyed him, and in fact still very much in love with his destroyer,

Preston Foster tells his son, "Sometimes a man loves one woman in the whole world. If she turns out to be the wrong one, well...that's just tough." Truly, the heart of noir is not blackness, but the white-hot scars of passion.

John Drew Barrymore Jr. Enters the "Family Tradition" and Dives Deeply and Emerges with an Over-the-Top Hot Performance that Desperately Demands a Non-Nepo Response.

Awkward, Nervously Angst-Ridden, He Performs Like His Life Depended-On-It, Trying Maybe a Beat too Hard.

But Director Losey Let Him, and other Things Here Go Un-Checked.

Relying on the Dark Underbelly of the City its Megalopolis Tendency to Erode and Crush the "Little People", that by Fate, Inhabit the Arteries of the "Concrete Jungle" Clinging to Every Vine and Crevice for Survival.

The Movie seems a Bit-Rushed (anticipating Losey's life in forced-flux), compared to Other more Solid Cinema Unleashed by the Cynical, Left-Leaning "Auteur" that was Victimized by the "Red-Scare" and an Out-of-Control Political Corruption that Failed to See the Unconstitutional Error of Their Ways in Real Time.

The Film, in 1951 was Made when Film-Noir itself was the Victim of a "System" on the Warpath to Sanitize anything in America that Looked Like a Trend Away from the Idealistic, Road-Map Created for a Guide of What Was and What Was Not Acceptable to the Clergy, Law Enforcement and a Fake Moral-Compass Pointing the Way of "Americanism" by Standards Made-Up On-the-Fly to Fit the Form of a Pre-Conceived Conservative Society that Toed-the-Line, Obeyed Orders from the Top and Didn't Ask Questions. After All, "They" were Looking-Out-For-You.

Losey, and Others were Free-Thinking, Empathetic, and were More Interested in the Collective Good and Not the Collective as Sub-Servant.

A True Film-Noir Founder and Pioneer. "The Big Night" is just 1 of His Many Contributions to the Growing, Spontaneous, Sub-Genre that Allowed 1940's Creative Film-Makers and Social Commentators to Vent and Vocalize a Point of View that was Hardly Main-Stream.

Like All of Joseph Losey Films...

Worth a Watch.