Que vienne la nuit

This mint julep melodrama is a hooty delight. I suppose that at the time it was meant to shine a light on racial injustice in the south but it just comes off as an over-baked soap opera. Preminger was the wrong director for such a piece of honeyed excess, this is the type of thing at which Douglas Sirk excelled and could make trenchant observations while still entertaining the masses. Still worth watching for the cast alone. Jane Fonda gives the most enjoyable performance even if her honeychile accent comes and goes. And even as a sharecropper's wife with four kids Faye Dunaway manages to look ravishing. If you like overdone melodramas with lots of stars and little sense than this is for you, if not stay away!

This is the most embarrassing excuse for a serious picture I have ever seen.

I'm sure "Hurry Sundown" tested the pre-ratings MPAA for it's supposedly frank depiction of sexual themes. It probably required television editing as ABC ran this film several times in the early '70s.

You could cut the sexual tension with a knife if it wasn't so funny. Jane Fonda seductively playing the sax with Michael Caine was probably suggestive enough to cause the censors to get nervous. But then we have Faye Dunaway's cartoonish overacting in that bedroom scene with John Phillip Law. At least poor white trash have healthy sex lives.

The only thing criminal about this movie is that it attempted to tackle the thorny subject of race relations in the 1940s in such a cheap, heavy handed manner.

I first knew about this film when I read about it in the book, "The Fifty Worst Films of All Time" and I also found out about its location shooting in my current hometown of Baton Rouge, La., either there or elsewhere. I also read that the locals there treated the cast and crew hostilely which makes me glad that my family didn't even move there until 1975 when I was about 7 and being just a kid, I usually got away with getting occasionally angry whenever other children my age called me "Chinese" (I'm actually of Filipino descent). About the movie itself, well, the first 30 minutes seemed all right dramatically-wise with the setting up of characters before Beah Richards' over-the-top heart attack turned the picture into close of an overheated soap opera worthy of "Dallas"-of which George Kennedy, who's a hoot as the sheriff with a penchant for liking the "coloreds", would join the cast of in the late '80s-especially whenever that mentally-challenged kid of Michael Caine and Jane Fonda was constantly crying. Caine had just become a star with Alfie while Ms. Fonda would become a sex symbol with Barbarella though maybe this film also contributed to her status when she played hubby Caine's sax. Another notable appearance was that of Faye Dunaway in an early role just before she became a star in Bonnie and Clyde. Burgess Meredith chews plenty of scenery as a bigoted judge especially when sharing some of that with Jim Backus as one of the attorneys in a court scene. By the way, Backus wasn't the only Sherwood Schwartz series regular-from "Gilligan's Island"-in that sequence as future star of "The Brady Bunch"-Robert Reed-would be his opposite here. And then there's Diahann Carroll who would later star in her own groundbreaking series the following year called "Julia". Okay, with that out of the way, I'll just say that I thought the drama was entertaining but I also knew that it's not for all tastes and leave it at that. So on that note, I recommend Hurry Sundown. P.S. On Wikipedia, I just found out that Preminger picked BR on the recommendation of production designer Gene Callahan who lived and eventually died there.

I won't argue with someone who says, "I hated this film". Clearly many people (including film critics) did. But, I disagree with those who say the acting performances were bad-----they were spot on. I disagree with those who say the "trashy" racist characters were over-the-top caricatures-----you haven't met some of my relatives. And, I disagree with those who say that real people never act like these characters do-----pick up a newspaper sometime, either 1950 or 2011. Yes, parts of the movie made me squirm and want to look away-----because the scenes were TOO real and heartbreaking. I, for one, do NOT want racism, past or present, swept under the rug. Show its ugliness. Make people squirm. Hollywood would never make "Hurry Sundown" today, because it is "politically incorrect". The film says our parents, children, neighbors, law enforcement officers, and politicians could be capable of violent racism. Really! No! Surely only in the movies!

I get the impression that most of the comments here are more influenced by the entry in "The 50 Worst Films of All Time" than by the film "Hurry Sundown" itself. Personally I don't give much credit to that book since I consider Michael Medved to be one of the four or five worst film reviewers of all time.

"Hurry Sundown" has been pretty much out of circulation in recent years. I shudder to think how network censors would have butchered it when it was broadcast on TV; anyone who saw it that way saw a different movie. It is now finally available on a good widescreen DVD and also on Amazon and Netflix streaming. I had been wanting to see it for a long time, if for no other reason than it being one of the handful of mainstream Hollywood films to earn a "condemned" rating from the Catholic Legion of Decency.

It wasn't nearly as bad as I expected; in fact I thought it was pretty good. It held my unflagging interest for its almost two-and-a-half hour running time, which is an accomplishment in itself; the worst thing a movie can be is boring. Not a great film, but an entertaining piece of Southern Gothic.

I couldn't get that upset at the casting of Michael Caine. I've certainly heard worse southern accents in movies. How about "Gone with the Wind" in which two of the four leads were played by Brits (and neither Leslie Howard nor Clark Gable even tried to sound southern)? Caine looked and sounded tentative in the opening helicopter scene (maybe that was the first scene filmed) but got more comfortable with the part as it went along. In many ways, Caine fit the role perfectly, since his character was a self-absorbed philanderer just like "Alfie."

People have scoffed at Burgess Meredith's racist judge, but let's face it, folks – people like that really existed in the South back then (and maybe still do; is that Arizona sheriff much different?). Was Meredith's portrayal much more over-the-top than Ed Begley's in "Sweet Bird of Youth", which won an Oscar? I got the impression that Meredith might have been basing his character on George Wallace (the pre-1968 version), and he wouldn't have been far off.

As for the poor having better sex than the rich, well that's one of those clichés that just might have a bit of truth in it, especially when the poor girl is Faye Dunaway.

Were the black characters over-idealized? Perhaps, but that is the way Hollywood handled race issues back in the civil rights era. See, for example, pretty much anything starring Sidney Poitier. I don't remember anyone trying to make a film of William Faulkner's "Light in August," in which the central character is a mixed-race psychopath.

"Hurry Sundown" is a good choice when you want a nice juicy wallow in southern decadence. The color photography is pretty good, as is the musical score by Hugo Montenegro.