So Dark the Night
Studio: Arrow Academy
Feb 20, 2019 Web Exclusive
Henri Cassin (Steven Geray) is Paris’s most celebrated homicide detective, having solved so many high-profile cases that his skills are spoken of across the nation. A tireless worker, he’s pushed into taking some long-deserved time off. Cassin is booked at a small bed and breakfast in the quiet French countryside, where he falls for the innkeeper’s much younger daughter (Micheline Cheirel) almost immediately after his arrival. He’s attracted to her beauty and naiveté; she’s smitten by his sophistication and the lure of a luxurious life in Paris. There’s a problem: the girl has already promised herself to a brutish bumpkin (Paul Marion). When both Henri’s beloved and her fiancé are found strangled to death nearby, he must swallow his grief and put on his investigator’s cap to aid the country police in hunting down the murderer.
Director Joseph H. Lewis’ immediate follow-up to 1945’s My Name is Julia Ross, a surprise hit out of Columbia Pictures’ b-movie department, So Dark the Night finds the filmmaker once again squeezing an impressive level of style out of a limited budget and tight shooting schedule. (The movie opens with an almost eerily cheery tone, and there are many daring shots that would have been visually impressive in a much more expensive production.) The plot itself plays like a somewhat mundane whodunit until the reveal of its major twist, which changes how you’ll see everything which occurred until that point; So Dark the Night is a rare movie that can be appreciated much more the second time around. Fortunately at 70 minutes, it’s not a big time commitment to give the movie another spin.
Like Arrow Academy’s new release of the aforementioned Julia Ross, So Dark the Night is presented in a very crisp-looking restoration with several nice, complementary bonus features. Critics Glenn Kenny and Farran Smith Nehme provide a full-length commentary track, while noir historian Imogen Sara Smith presents a very informative video essay on Lewis’ career at Columbia and So Dark the Night’s context within the film noir strata. Though we believe My Name is Julia Ross is the stronger film of the two new Blu-ray releases, So Dark the Night is another underrated gem worth a look for fans of film noir.
(mvdshop.com/products/so-dark-the-night-blu-ray)
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February 25th 2019
3:28am
it was one of the best trailer and i really loved it…
August 20th 2019
11:24am
wow awesome trailer waiting for more updates. Now you can watch more videos on thoptv