November Nights: Night Must Fall (1937)

RODNEY BOWCOCK: Night Must Fall centers on a small English village shook with the news of a missing woman, and zeroes in on the home of a hypochondriac and her team of servants. One of these servants has found herself pregnant by a worker in the town who claims to want to marry her. When Danny (Robert Montgomery), the aforementioned layabout finally appears, he quickly ingrates himself into the household winning the affections of the old dowager (Dame May Whitty) and sets his sights on her bookish and verbally abused niece Olivia (Rosalind Russell), who is attracted to him in spite of knowing that something isn’t quite right.

SAMANTHA GLASSER: Danny doesn’t seem to have any romantic feelings toward the maid at all. I would have liked to see him charm her and make her flustered to show why she was fooled so easily by him. We are told in a 1937 way that she is pregnant and the only way to make the situation acceptable is for her to marry Danny. Their interactions are the weakest part of the movie.

Danny is introduced like a greaser would be in later years with a cigarette dangling from his lip and a disinterested attitude. He spends his time manipulating people to like him so he can get away with being as shiftless as he is.

RB: This is really a powerhouse role for Robert Montgomery, and I know that we’re going to talk about this a lot, but really it is his film. There is a casualness to the way that he handles the sociopathic Danny that the film really hinges on.

SG: Emlyn Williams, the author of the play, was Danny on the stage, but he grew tired of the role and opted not to play the lead in the film version. “I thought they filmed it extremely well,” he said. “His clothes were so right... The atmosphere of the wood came over with great effect… Yes, the changed ending in the film does weaken it. The attempt to satisfy propriety by giving the girl a nice young man to replace Dan is not only untrue to character and unconvincing, but fails to register on the mind. The young man simply doesn't 'come over'. I don't think that the changing of the ending implies that film audiences are of inferior intellects to those in the theatre. It was purely an error of judgment of the makers of the film… Still, I have no serious complaint. The job, as a whole, was well done.”

RB: Was this the code or was it the way that MGM, more than any other classic studio in Hollywood would mess with things? Both seemed insistent on trying to wring some sort of a happy ending out of affairs, and while this one does seem a bit tacked on, being unfamiliar with the play, I didn’t notice nor mind it.

SG: It felt to me like Olivia was trying to convince herself she could be happy with someone safe, even though it is clear to us that isn't true. Hollywood magazine’s reviewer praised the film and especially Montgomery, who he said “Gives a performance which, despite its macabre and sinister tone, will rank as one of the most outstanding of the year. Dominating the picture throughout its entire length, Montgomery's intensely vivid and realistic portrayal of the insane Danny will hold you spellbound from the time he appears on the screen until he makes his final exit.” He fought hard to get the part, asking MGM for two years to buy the property, and he proved himself worthy of the role. Montgomery said, “I've got awfully tired of having them hand me a script and saying: 'Now this fellow's name is George. We know he doesn't mean anything, but you can do something with him.' I've been doing that so long that I wanted to do something different.” He adopted an Irish accent for the film, because he felt the Welsh accent from the play was too difficult to master.

He is clearly bad news, but in spite of Olivia’s rational thoughts, she is attracted to Danny. She reveals herself when she stops wearing her glasses after he makes a comment that she would be pretty without them. (Oh how I groan when I see this trope in movies, although as a glasses-wearer I know it to be true in practice.)

RB: Nah, it’s not true, at least I don’t think so. It doesn’t mean anything, and it’s always ridiculous when people say that…

SG: I want to take a minute to praise Rosalind Russell’s beauty. She is lovely on the surface, and intelligence shines from her eyes. I think of her in the vein of Aline MacMahon whose beauty is undeniable, but her personality overshadows it to the point that we often overlook it.

RB: I tend to associate Russell with light comedy, even though I know that’s not what she was known for at the time that this was filmed. I thought her performance was mesmerizing, especially the way that we see her gradual realization into the genuine creep that Danny is.

SG: Dame May Whitty is the only actor reprising their role from the stage production. Photoplay magazine said, “Direction and production are artistically superlative, and each individual performance is an acting triumph. Dame Whitty's sequence of hysteria will linger in your memory for months.” This was her first screen role since dabbling in silent movies decades earlier it would be far from her last.

Richard Thorpe’s direction is interesting. In one scene he has Danny delivering a speech with his back to the camera, which tells the audience that he is just pontificating again. It is clear that the last scene between Mrs. Bramson and Danny took several takes because the level of the drink in her glass keeps changing throughout. He was known to be a patient director who rarely raised his voice and who always had meticulously planned each day the evening prior.

RB: The direction and camera work really cause this film to shine and add to the slow building suspense of the film.

SG: The pacing is gentle in the face of a capital crime like murder, which draws the audience in and keeps them wondering what will happen. The characters are all imperfect, so we bounce from one to the other alternately rooting for them all.

RB: The slow build is almost Hitchcockian, and I wonder if he may have been a fan of the film. While I can appreciate that sort of thing, this film took it to a nearly extreme level and I often found myself wishing that 15 minutes would’ve been cribbed from the final cut. That said, in defense of the film, I can’t really determine WHAT fifteen minutes I’d clip if I had control of the editior.

SG: Our Gang fans will catch a glimpse of little Jerry Tucker in the scene where they find the body.

“Animals and young children know about people.”

Delight Evans for Screenland wrote, “Just the entertainment for a warm evening, Night Must Fall will chill you completely without benefit of air-cooling.” Interestingly, several reviewers referred to it as a horror film, though today we would call the film a drama or at most a thriller.

RB: The neighborhood theaters were all over the place with this one.

“I do not hardly know how to report on this picture. Heard several say they had seen sorry pictures but this one had all of them beaten. Others said they liked it. Was too long and tiresome. Really boresome and not the kind of picture for Bob Montgomery.” - Alice Simmons Strand and Lyric Theatres, Jefferson, TX

“If there was one single good comment on this one, we did not get it. It was the most universally disliked picture that we have ever played. We did not hear one that said they liked it...the business on the second night, nil. I would probably have had more with a small-pox sign on the door”. — A. E. Hancock, Columbia Theatre, Columbia City, IN

“This production screams to a new high in macabre, suspenseful drama, and will thoroughly please those patrons who delight in horror stories." - Nino Sunseri. Naselle Theatre, Naselle. Wash

SG: Night Must Fall is an entertaining film with outstanding performances. Four stars.

RB: I’m going to beg to differ with you on this one, the pace during the first half is just SOOOO slow as the film sets up what we know is likely to happen. Once everything kicks into high gear, it becomes a satisfying drama, dampened by the fact that we knew exactly what was going to happen from nearly the start. I liked it, but not as much as you. Three stars.