edwagreen Fine acting by our future president and Viveca Lindfors adds to the drama of this 1949 film.This is one of Reagan's best performances, next to "King's Row," of 1942. As the scientist suffering with epilepsy, who meets a woman (Lindfors) who can't get over her husband's death in World War 11, Ronald Reagan gives a searing performance, as a man hesitant to fall in love with death hanging over his head. Lindfors pulls out all the stops as the grieving widow in this melodrama.In the year that he won the best actor Oscar for "All the King's Men," Broderick Crawford shows up in the film in a supporting role as an artist friendly with the Reagan character. He did not seem comfortable in the part due to his persona of playing tough, gritty individuals in films. His painter role with children married to Rosemary De Camp, just doesn't seem to fit the bill here.There is a terrific supporting performance by Osa Massey as Lindfor's brooding, drunk, and nasty sister. She will stop at nothing to hurt her sister and even say things that could lead to our scientist killing himself.The ending hurricane scene is appropriate for if we can come out of this fierce storm, we can conquer anything. A touching movie not letting a serious illness get in the way of finding true love.

MartinHafer "Night Unto Night" was made in 1947 and was not released until 1949. That is a very bad sign...a sign that the studio thought they had a bomb on their hands. While I would not call this one a bomb, it certainly could have been a lot better...and it's a shame because the acting is really nice in this one...particularly by Ronald Reagan in the lead.When the film begins, John (Reagan) moves to the Florida coast and finds a home to rent. A widow (Viveca Linfors) wants to leave her home...and not for the usual reasons. She thinks the place is haunted and she hears her dead husband's voice there! John thinks this is nutty but is a gentle man and treats her well despite her odd delusion. Eventually the pair fall in love...but he has a secret he broods over...he has epilepsy.The acting and production values are really nice in this one but the film acted like epilepsy is some sort of death sentence...or at least a life destroyer! It certainly isn't and handling the illness this way seemed pretty crass and silly. Overall, some nice moments but the plot just didn't make a lot of sense...and marrying a man who occasionally goes blank (which happens with many types of seizures) is NOT something that destroys your life or makes you destined to be a lonely recluse! The writing sinks this one....and it's a shame as Reagan is at his best in this one. And, I wonder how epileptics felt when they watched this film...as if they were somehow destined for hollow lives because of the disorder!

sol ***SPOILERS*** Extremely deep and heavy stuff directed by Don Siegel who's known for his shoot em up police flicks like "Madigan" and "Dirty Harry". It's here where Siegel directs the kind of movie that you would have expected the famed Swedish director Ingmar Bergman to do.The films title "Night Unto Night" even sounds like an Ingmar Bergman movie but that's where the similarities, between Siegel and Bergman, ends. In the movie Bio-Chemist John Galen, Ronald Reagan, is looking for a place to stay, on the Florida East Coast, to conduct his experiments on bacteriological agents to improve the healing powers of penicillin. Staying at Ann Gracy's, Viceca Linfors, almost empty mansion John soon comes to realize that Ann is a bit off center in her insisting that she communicates, verbally, with her dead husband Bill. John being a man of science knows that the dead can't communicate with anyone but keeps that fact from Ann in order not to ether embarrass or hurt her feelings. It's when John comes in contact with C.L Shawn, Broderick Crawford, an artist as well as deep thinker whom he considerer's to be in full control of his mental faculties that his opinion about Ann starts to change. Shawn sees nothing strange at all in the existence of ghosts and unfamiliar spirits that John feels is nothing but pure unadulterated BS!Ann soon falls in love with John, a life long bachelor, but he doesn't seem that interested in her because it, having an affair with Ann, will interfere with his scientific research. It's then that the cat is let out of the bag in John's very strange and bizarre behavior. It soon comes out that John is suffering from a severe case of epilepsy and is trying, in the Florida sunshine, live with the disease. John's epilepsy according to the doctors treating it-Dr. Pool(Art Baker) from his hometown of Chicago and Dr. Altheim (Erskine Sanford) from here in Florida-is getting worse by the day and will eventually render him useless as a man of science or anything else!It's later when Ann gets the news, from Shawn, about John's condition that she does everything to get him to overcome the stigma, back then in the 1940's, of being an hopeless epileptic. It's when Ann's jealous sister Lisa, Osa Massen, who's also crazy about John, and whom John earlier rejected, insults and humiliates John, in front of Ann among others, about his condition that he tried to keep secret that he went into, what seemed like, an epileptic seizure. Hurt and ashamed about being exposed, as an epileptic, John goes into his room planing to end it all by blowing, with a .45 caliber revolver, his brains out.***SPOILER ALERT*** As it turned out it was Ann who came to Johns aid and, by threatening to kill herself, kept him from committing suicide. John looked at things, like the scientist that he was, as being either black or white without any grays in between. It was both Ann as well as Shawn who believed in things beyond science, like life surviving death, that made John see the light that always eluded him. It also made John realize that even though his illness, epilepsy, was not curable faith in a higher power as well as the whole hearted support of those who love him will do a lot more for him then all of medical science put together.

RanchoTuVu Stunning photography and Don Siegel's direction make the most of an unusual overly melodramatic story starring Ronald Reagan as a scientist with epilepsy who goes to south Florida on doctor's orders and meets a young woman, (Viveca Lindfors) recently widowed, who is haunted by the voice of her dead husband. Reagan rents her slightly dilapidated beach mansion and experiences several epileptic episodes, but tries his best to keep his condition a secret. Broderick Crawford's role as an artist who lives close by verges on annoying as he goes on and on about art and life. Ossa Massen gives the film a boost as Lindfor's scheming, jealous sister who tries seducing Reagan and later drunkenly blurts out his secret when she realizes that she can't have him. The concluding hurricane arrives just in time, with all the main characters assembled for dinner in the creaky old mansion, and Reagan pushed to verge of suicide by the shame of his medical condition, while Lindfors begs him to reconsider.