L'assassin frappe à minuit

Rex Harrison and Lilli Palmer star in the British "The Long Dark Hall," from 1951.

Harrison plays Arthur Groome, who stands trial for the murder of a showgirl, played by Patricia Wayne. Actually, the person who did it is a man who has killed before (Anthony Dawson), which we see in the beginning. However, thanks to some circumstantial evidence, Groome, who was involved with Rose, stands accused.

His wife Mary (Palmer) knows he couldn't have killed the woman, no matter what, and stands by him.

This evidently was an attempt to cash in on the suicide of Carole Landis in 1948. As the story goes, Harrison, who was married to Palmer at the time, refused to divorce her and marry Landis, which is said to have driven Landis to suicide. She left two suicide notes, one of which was for Harrison, and Harrison destroyed it and claimed he knew no reason for her suicide. This was long ago, and I imagine many stories have sprung up and been embellished, so it's hard to know what happened. It is known that Landis knew by 1948 that she wasn't going to have the career she wanted; she was 29, and by the time you were a female aged 30 in Hollywood, you were done playing the kind of role she did. Palmer stood by Harrison during the scandal and attended Landis' funeral with him.

Now, why these two would have agreed to do this film is beyond even my wild imagination, except both of them might have been trying to prove something.

It's an okay movie with one problem. We are taken through the criminal's first murder and his murder of Rose; the arrest of Arthur; the trial; the testimony; his alibi witness guilty for not coming forward; the verdict. And then, one minute before the film ends, we are told the whole rest of the story. It seemed a little abrupt to me, as if the money ran out or something.

The acting is very good, Harrison a great pro and Palmer, lovely and elegant. Though she and Harrison did not divorce until 1956, she left him in 1954 and made films in her native Germany, though she continued to make American films.

This is a pretty interesting mystery. It's not really suspenseful but it's done with style.

However, I wonder what purpose it was meant to serve for the public relations of its star Rex Harrison. His friend Carole Landis, a charming star of generally minor films, had killed herself a few years before this came out. As a result, his therefore rising box office appeal had plummeted. Indeed, the brilliant "Unfaithfully Yours" had the bad fortune to come out right after Ms. Landis had died. No one wanted to see Rex Harrison killing a woman over and over -- even if it was in his imagination. "Unfaithfully Yours" was not a success, despite director Preston Sturges's career as Hollywood (apparent) golden boy. Sturges really did not survive this failure commercially.

So, here we have a decent man accused of murdering a pretty young woman. Like the star himself, the character is married to (the very appealing) Lilli Palmer. I don't want to give away the plot. Let's just say that this is a movie that comes out against quick decisions in tabloid cases.

Can this have been a coincidence? Maybe it was. I don't know anything about its history. However, I sincerely doubt that it was.

A very fine actress was Lilli Palmer - sensitive, thoughtful, moving - and this picture gives us another reason to admire her skill. And anyone wishing to learn how to create a believable performance would do well to study her work and profit by bit. In THE LONG DARK HALL she brings great strength to her role as a wife who wants to believe in her husband, come what may.

THE LONG DARK HALL was produced by Rex Harrison himself. For the film he brought together a fine group of artists to help him make it, among them screenwriter Nunnally Johnson, whose long and distinguished record in the film world needs no introduction. He chose a top British cinematographer, Wilkie Cooper, to bring the proper film noir look and mood to the film and commissioned Benjamin Frankel to compose another of his fine scores. The cast is extremely good. One always marvels at the effortless perfection of the likes of Denis O'Dea, Brenda de Banzie and Raymond Huntley who have never, to my knowledge, ever given a bad performance. The villainy in the film was in the very capable hands of Anthony Dawson, whom many will remember as the paid murderer in Hitchcock's DIAL M FOR MURDER.

While the ending is cobbled together a shade too quickly the great fun I had watching this drama made up for any disappointment. After all, the ending was a logical one, even if it could have been handled with a bit more cinematic flair. All in all, a nice, atmospheric, well-made thriller.

The plot is not original...Mistress is Murdered,Married Man accussed...Wife stands by him. But Sir Rex Harrison makes you believe in the story. Harrison gives an extremely fine and brilliant performance which raises the film from a typical pot boiler into the story of a regretful innocent man. Lily Palmer (at the time..Mrs. Harrison) is also in fine form as his on screen wife.

Wow--talk about divergent reviews. Two apparently hated the film (giving it a score of 2) and two liked it very much (giving it a score of 7). I think my opinion is somewhat in the middle--though I think giving the film a 2 is awfully silly. It's NOT a bad film, though I would agree with goldbug-2 that the forensic work done by the police seems sloppy. In fact, up until late in the film, I could look past the problems with the knife and other evidence. However, the completely unbelievable ending and the major mistake in the film concerning the witness they could not locate made me mad--as it just looked sloppy and the film seemed to be wrapped up too quickly. Let me explain the problem with both. Rex Harrison's character insisted there was a witness that could place him at the restaurant and later you see this witness come to court but then walk away without giving evidence. How could this be? The film was told to an author by a newspaper man but how could the newspaper man tell that the witness DID come to court but then ran away without telling anyone--how could he have known this?! As for the ending, the film maintained a rather steady pace throughout but at the end, everything was basically described to the audience--neatly wrapping everything up but not even showing what they were describing! It was like they decided not to film the last 20 minutes of the movie and just sum it up in 5!! Sloppy indeed.

It's all rather sad, as up until then, the film was well written, acted and kept my attention. Sadly, I was anticipating giving the film a 7--but the sloppy ending really brought the film down to the level of mediocrity. Too bad.

By the way, I rarely directly complain about an other review, but the one reviewer that complained ad nauseum about the 1950s really needs to stick to the film itself and not give us a diatribe about sexism and repression. You can't so strongly attack one film because you have such strong contempt for the 1950s! Who cares what you think about the 1950s? While I do agree that Lilli Palmer played a woman with very low self-esteem (considering how much she excused her womanizing husband), such vehemence about the film is just bizarre. Her character might have justified giving the film a somewhat lower score, but not this low.