CRY IN THE NIGHT
US, 1956, 75 minutes, Black and white.
Edmond O’ Brien, Bryan Donlevy, Natalie Wood, Raymond Burr, Richard Anderson, Carol Veazie.
Directed by Frank Tuttle.
A Cry in the Night is a brief police thriller. It tackles a subject which is perennial, the abduction of young women and their imprisonment.
This time the victim is played by Natalie Wood, the same year that she appeared in The Searchers. Her father, a policeman with a ready punch, is played by Edmond O’Brien? who won an Oscar for best supporting actor two years earlier for The Barefoot Contessa. Bryan Donlevy is the captain of police. Raymond Burr is yet another villain, this time something of a man with a very simple mind, but deadly in his abduction of his victim and keeping her. Carol Veazie plays his very unsympathetic mother.
The film was directed very efficiently by Frank Tuttle (his second-last film). A writer in Hollywood from the early 1920s, he had a strong career in the 1930s with directing brief small-budget films. In the 1940s he directed Alan Ladd in This Gun for Hire and Lucky Jordan – and Ladd provides the voice-over introduction to this film.
1. How interesting a crime thriller, police film, human relationship drama?
2. The police films of the 50's? Police work and characters? Solving crimes? Villains? Sex crimes? A comparison with the development of the genre through the 60's and 70's. especially with television series and the police films of the 70s? How different? How do films like this compare?
3. Black and white photography, melodramatic moods? The narrative at the beginning? Location photography, police work and details?
4. The credibility of the plot? Owen and Liz and Liz’s family? Their being in lovers' loop? Harold Loftus and his mania, relationship with his mother, driven to action against his mother and his menacing Liz? Dan Taggert and the aggressive arrogant policeman ready to do violence for his family? The ordinary police? The interaction of all the characters in terms of aggression?
5. The focus on Liz as an ordinary young, American girl? her relationship with mother and father? at home and her father's dominance? Relationship with Owen? Owen as the ordinary and genial young man, his heroism at the end? The contrast with Taggert and his skill at his work, relationship with his wife, sister? His bullying the police, carrying a gun, threatening to kill, his aggressiveness towards Owen? The truth told to him by his sister? The final confrontation with Loftus? How much did he realise at the end, how much change?
6. The portrait of the police, the captain and his role? Taggert and his twenty years in the force? The particular details of care, bookings overnight e.g. the bigamous woman? An authentic atmosphere?
7. The character of Harold Loftus, watching the couple, violence towards Owen, kidnapping Liz and holding her, his place, the apricot pie, his hatred of his mother and his revelation about his mother to Liz? The gun? His wanting to have a friend? The reinforcement of this with the scenes with his mother?
8. The melodramatics of Liz trying to cope and escape, the final violence? The shooting of the policeman?
9. How convincing a portrait of a night in the city? Crime and criminals? Social attitudes leading to such crises?
