THE NIGHT VISITOR

US/Sweden, 1971, 106 minutes, Colour.
Max Von Sydow, Trevor Howard, Liv Ullman, Per Oscarsson, Rupert Davies, Andrew Keir.
Directed by Laszlo Benedek.

The Night Visitor is a tantalising thriller. It focuses on crimes, the audience seeing the person who commits the crimes – but, it seems, it is impossible for the killer to have committed the crimes. The screenplay pursues characters, the investigation, the environment – and, of course, provides some twists.

The film has a very strong international cast led by Max von Sydow and Trevor Howard as the inspector. Liv Ullmann and Per Oscarsson also have substantial roles.

The film was directed by Laszlo Benedek, the Hungarian-born director who made The Kissing Bandit with Kathryn Grayson and Frank Sinatra in Hollywood in the 1940s, went on to make Death of a Salesman with Frederic March and The Wild One with Marlon Brando. However, his subsequent career was principally in television.

1. Was this a good thriller? How did the film build up its thriller atmosphere?

2. What conventions of the thriller did the film chiefly use? How? How well?

3. What did the Scandinavian settings add to the film? Especially the night, the darkness, the snow and the cold?

4. What did the atmospheric music and photography add to the film?

5. Salem: as a character, the impact of her first appearance, suspicions of what he was doing, the horror
of his murders, the ingenuity at his escape, the nature of his madness and his mania, his cunning, his malice?

6. Comment on the atmosphere of injustice in the film? concerning money, power, life and death, madness and sanity, Imprisonment?

7. Ester and Anton: their villainy? Did you suspect them at first? How had crime affected their life over the two years? Why were they edgy and suspicious with each other? Was this part of their punishment?

8. Ester as a person? mean, selfish, dominating? Her fear and her conjuring before she was murdered? Did she deserve to die? Why?

9. Anton as a person? As a worried doctor, his fear, his being terrorised by Salem? His fear of Salaam, Ester? The fact that he was a victim of Salem's plan? His terror add his final confession?

10. The lawyer and his fear?

11. Impressions of the asylum and the nature of a life of imprisonment there?

12. How was suspense generated in Salem's final getting out, the elaborate plans and our understanding these? His hurried return to beat the police?

13. How ironic was the ending with the parrot in his pocket?

14. Although this was a thriller, it dealt with justice, life and death and madness. In what way was it a moralising thriller?