clanciai I guess the ambition behind this film was to make it better than the original, that is the French "Le jour se lève" by Marcel Carné with Jules Berry outstanding as the crook with the tragic hero Jean Gabin and his heart-breaking love Arletty in the greatest of French melodramas. In all films with Jean Gabin he dies in the end. Henry Fonda does not and is a somewhat more prosaic and convincing tragic hero, more humanly credible, than Jean Gabin's great cliché. Barbara Bel Geddes as his love is even more down to earth, a very palpable orphan girl displaying total honesty all the way, while Vincent Price as the crook, here a magician and expert trickster and con man living by professional lies all the way, is more subtle than Jules Berry but less of a character, the least convincing of the three. Ann Dvorak, on the other hand, makes an impressing sub and plays a very important part in triggering Henry Fonda up to his total fury, which simply must be sympathized with, which also the crowd does, which is expertly filmed. On the whole, the direction in this film is as marvelous as in any Anatole Litvak film, he knows like Elia Kazan how to handle people and make them convincing in probably some very deep knowledge of human nature, which makes this film a great experience to live through. To all this comes the music, Beethoven's seventh in fantastic arrangements, different every time, which adds to the moody dark atmosphere growing and ominously building up towards the inevitable catastrophe - the music puts the last touch to the masterpiece. I have to admit it, I felt the Jean Gabin film rather overrated, slow, heavy and even partly boring, but this simpler but more efficient American version is not. I have to give it ten points, even though it's no more than a humbler remake of one of the most famous of all noirs.

MartinHafer I don't like remakes--and that is why I waited so long to watch "The Long Night". Originally it was a dandy French film ("Le Jour Se Leve") and I saw no reason to redo the film, as the original was quite good. And, after seeing it, I stick by my original opinion--there just wasn't a need to make this remake. However, I can understand why they made it, as folks in the States back in the 1940s did not watch foreign films--and when they saw this American version, it did seem original. But now with DVDs, Turner Classic Movies and Netflix, you should just stick with "Le Jour Se Leve".The film is a talky picture about a brooding guy (Henry Fonda), his sweetie-pie (Barbara Bel Geddes) and a completely bizarre blabber-mouth (Vincent Price). Fonda and Bel Geddes are in love but Price is determined to break them up--and push Fonda to the breaking point. The story is told through flashbacks and is similar to the Jean Gabin film--without the film noir camera-work and lighting. Also, the American version comes off as much talkier--much. All in all, not a terrible film at all--but not the 9 that the other film deserved when I rated it a couple years ago.

Neil Doyle It's too bad THE LONG NIGHT couldn't have been a short one.This is a disastrously dull movie with HENRY FONDA and BARBARA BEL GEDDES both playing implausibly motivated people who fall in love at first sight. Fonda plays another one of his "everyman" roles but is more of a lost puppy than usual in this depressingly dark noir directed without his usual style by Anatole Litvak.The first twenty-five minutes had me wanting to switch the movie off, it was so poorly constructed. I found it impossible to watch the whole thing.If any kind of film noir is your thing, you may stick around to see the whole movie. I found it a frustrating waste of time and certainly not a film that Fonda or Bel Geddes should be proud to have on their resume.

MisterWhiplash I wouldn't say The Long Night is a great film, and if anything it only peaks my interest more to see how much more classic the film it's based on is- Marcel Carne's La Jour se Leve. But for the time it ran, I was mostly glued to the screen, and got wrapped up in the plight of Henry Fonda's character Joe, and his predicament of his downfall from normalcy. It probably isn't very original, taking aside its connection with the French source; it's about a factory worker, very nice guy, who falls in love with a woman whom, he finds out, was an orphan just like him. But one night he follows her to a bar, sees her cavorting sort of with a sleazy magician (Vincent Price), and his perfect image of her is shattered, and grows only darker after he meets him (he first tells Joe he's her father, which is a truly great scene between two huge stars of classic film), and when she tells him about her history with him.While I could never take my eyes off the screen, it should be said that for all of the strong craftsmanship with the picture (it's one of the finest photographed 'noirs' of the late 40s, especially for those stark scenes of Joe alone in his room with the whole town on the street calling for him) and for all of the tremendous talent in front of the camera- besides Fonda and Price, who the former it's a splendid and rewarding if not best-ever performance and for the latter a triumph of playing sneaky and villainous, the girl playing Jo Ann (Barbara Bel Geddes) is very good- it only works up to a point. I was engrossed the most in the last twenty minutes or so, as the film revved up its pace and tempo to the "will Joe or won't Joe" beat. Before that, it's many scenes that mostly rely on the presence of the actors to uplift the material past the breezy and conventional air of the dialog. There's nothing especially "wrong" with the material, but it doesn't go anywhere aside from hitting its main points.The Long Night is something of a minor lost marvel- only recently did it come out on DVD in an OK print- and for Fonda and Price fans its a can't-miss kind of picture. Just don't go expecting anything that will change your perception of what film-noirs can go that don't go for the easy routes.