Night Unto Night (1949)

Too much of everything

Pretty Good

best movie i've ever seen.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

"Night Unto Night" is by no means outstanding, but is not the bottom of the barrel effort that some reviewers have claimed. It is a serious attempt to portray two serious personal problems.The first is the difficult task of coming to grips with the death of a spouse; the husband of Vivica Lindfors' character has been killed in the war (WWII). The second is having to face a serious medical condition; Reagan's character, a scientist, suffers from epilepsy.The pace of the film is, to say the least, leisurely. The climax, which comes during a Florida hurricane, finally provides a bit of action. The acting is good throughout. Reagan's performance is competent if not outstanding. Vivica Lindfors and Broderick Crawford are better.The attitude toward epilepsy was somewhat different in 1949 from what it is today, and one sees that portrayed in this film. (I believe that the symptoms displayed by Reagan's character are not accurate.) "Night Unto Night" was produced with the best of intentions, but the final product does not live up to expectations. It is, however, worth at least one viewing.

On the east coast of Florida, epileptic scientist Ronald Reagan (as John Galen) rents a house from attractive, but loony, Viveca Lindfors (as Ann Gracy). The house comes with a maid, Lillian Yarbo (as Josephine), who seems to appear from a different movie. Ms. Lindfors' sexy sister, Osa Massen (as Lisa), visits Mr. Reagan, and he begins to become intrigued by Lindfors' tragic history - she thinks her dead husband "Bill" speaks to her. Broderick Crawford (as Shawn) is a believer. The "house" sets, location, photography, and direction are strengths. Reagan is thoroughly unconvincing, and the story is wastefully insufferable.** Night Unto Night (1949) Don Siegel ~ Ronald Reagan, Viveca Lindfors, Broderick Crawford

Stunning photography and Don Siegel's direction make the most of an unusual overly melodramatic story starring Ronald Reagan as a scientist with epilepsy who goes to south Florida on doctor's orders and meets a young woman, (Viveca Lindfors) recently widowed, who is haunted by the voice of her dead husband. Reagan rents her slightly dilapidated beach mansion and experiences several epileptic episodes, but tries his best to keep his condition a secret. Broderick Crawford's role as an artist who lives close by verges on annoying as he goes on and on about art and life. Ossa Massen gives the film a boost as Lindfor's scheming, jealous sister who tries seducing Reagan and later drunkenly blurts out his secret when she realizes that she can't have him. The concluding hurricane arrives just in time, with all the main characters assembled for dinner in the creaky old mansion, and Reagan pushed to verge of suicide by the shame of his medical condition, while Lindfors begs him to reconsider.

A curious, brooding drama with metaphysical airs, Night Unto Night holds interest by its very oddity (and to some extent as an early directorial effort by Don Siegel). It's set in pre-boom, primitive Florida near the Everglades and takes its redemptive close during a purging hurricane, along the way touching on transcendent themes - though it seems to confuse spirituality with spiritualism. These are its dramatis personae:. Ronald Reagan plays a biochemist (!) come to coastal Florida seeking a simple, reclusive life; he's been diagnosed with epilepsy and, man of science or not, he views his condition as a mysterious and terrible curse. So he rents a gloomy old pile of a house from a young widow where he sets up a laboratory to fiddle with his molds and spores. He's a disturbed, perhaps suicidal man, but, Kings Row notwithstanding, Reagan is an actor who leaves the impression of never having been troubled a day in his life. . Viveca Lindfors is the widow, who must vacate the house because in it she keeps hearing the voice of her dead husband, whose boat was torpedoed just offshore. Lindfors was imported to Hollywood in an attempt to recreate the mystique of Ingrid Bergman, whom she resembled in voice and visage, but the imposture never quite worked. Still, she's as good here as she ever was and gives a glimpse into the thinking that brought her from Sweden.. Broderick Crawford is a friend and neighbor. In a drastic stretch, he plays a painter who earns his living doing commercial art but saves his talent for vast murals in what looks like the Socialist-realism school. Nonetheless, he serves as the spokesman for faith, which he carries like a chip on his shoulder, waylaying the scientists and psychiatrists he meets with harangues about their puny rationalism.. Osa Mussen, though a Dane not a Swede, plays Lindfors' twisted sister, a spiteful hedonist who throws herself at Reagan and does not suffer rebuff kindly. She drinks too much and ignites the volatile gases of the plot's alchemy.The story, from a novel by Philip Wylie (whose 15 minutes of notoriety would come in the mid-1950s with his book Generation of Vipers), has a reach which far exceeds its grasp. While it does hold interest - thanks chiefly to Siegel's shifting but steady pace - it raises questions which it does not bother to (or cannot) resolve. Too many of its strands (the spirit of the dead man, the murderous enmity between the sisters, Crawford's ill-packed intellectual baggage) start to flap in the winds of the concluding hurricane and fly off, never to be seen again. At the end, all that we're left with of the ineffable is plain old guy-meets-gal chemistry.