WAIT UNTIL DARK

US, 1967, 107 minutes, Colour.
Audrey Hepburn, Alan Arkin, Richard Crenna, Efrem Zimbalist Jr, Jack Weston.
Directed by Terence Young.

Wait Until Dark was originally a play by Frederick Knott, writer of Dial M for Murder.

This film version was directed by Terence Young, best known as director of three James Bond films, Doctor No, From Russia With Love and Thunderball. He also directed quite a wide range of genres, including the thriller Bloodline, also with Audrey Hepburn.

Audrey Hepburn, in an Oscar-nominated performance, is a blind woman who, unwittingly, has a doll filled with drugs that criminals are after. They try to persuade her to part with the doll, search for it – building up to quite a dramatic three-minute climax where Alan Arkin pursues Audrey Hepburn across the kitchen floor while she tries to shut the refrigerator door so that he will not be able to see her. It had audiences in the 1960s screaming with terror.

The film was videoed in 1982 with Katharine Ross and Stacy Keach – and has been revived many times, even with Quentin Tarantino as one of the criminals on the Broadway stage.

1. The tone and suspense implied in the title? The theme of the title was blindness. The use of light and dark in the film? Audience expectations for a thriller?

2. How successful a thriller? How well did the film use thriller conventions? Above average use? The convention of the doll? The identity of the criminals? The criminals themselves, heroism of the heroine? The use of phones, lights, trick photography, a dramatic climax? Why do audiences enjoy this?

3. The film as significant for its capacity to frighten audiences at the end? How was this done technically? How effective? Why do audiences like to be frightened like this? its effect on women and their identification with Audrey Hepburn, in peril?

4. The film was based on a play. Was this obvious? Did the film give the impression of staginess at all? In dialogue or in setting?

5. Could the audience identify with Suzy? Her plight as a blind woman? Audrey Hepburn and her style? The fear atmosphere, the sense of achievement of a blind woman, her tear of fire and the peri, her being deceived, yet her being able to identify things by hearing and her ingenuity?

6. How sympathetic was Sam? Ephrem Zimbalist's personality? The fact that he was absent for most of the film? Was there suspicion that he was used in the plot? As part of the deception and terror for Suzy? As the rescuing hero at the end? The role of Gloria in the film? Sinister at the beginning, then compassion for Suzy, then her role in the plot resolution? How well drawn were Sam and Gloria?

7. How interesting were Mike and Carlino as criminal types? Amateur style, the details of their deceit, their relentlessness in pursuing Suzy in. her terror, their change of heart, the drama of their deaths? Was there any insight into the criminal mind in these characters? How skilfully portrayed were the sequences in which they were involved in the Roth’s deceit?

8. How central was the character of Roth? As mad, as a mastermind, meeting Mike and Carlino and involving them in murdering the girl, in his use of disguise, in his vindictiveness over Suzy? Audience repulsion for him? The melodramatics of his struggle with Suzy, his pursuit of her, his death?

9. How real did this situation and the sequences seem? How unreal? Does this matter for a thriller?

10. What do audiences want from thrillers? Did this film live up to audience expectation?