Endless Night
by Sidney Gilliat
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Britt Ekland, David Bauer, George Sanders, Hayley Mills, Hywel BennettDirector: Sidney Gilliat
Cinematographer: Harry Waxman
Producer: Sidney Gilliat
Writer: Sidney Gilliat
Editor: Thelma Connell
Producer: Leslie Gilliat
Writer: Agatha Christie
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Anamorphic, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen, 1.77:1
Running Time: 95 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2001-02-27
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Starz / Anchor Bay
Movie Reviews of Endless Night
Movie Review: An unusual role for Hayley Mills
Summary: 5 Stars
I'm not an Agatha Christie fan but I've always adored Hayley Mills in any movie. I'm endeavoring to collect all of her movies I have not yet seen. This movie was quite different than anything I have seen her in before and I have not read this book.
I personally don't think Spoilers applies to a movie this old, but if you are someone who doesn't want to know the details of a movie, you shouldn't be reading our comments... especially mine. So stop now if you don't want to know the film details.
There was a bit of Hitchcock intrigue in this movie. I was actually quite shocked by the drastic turn of events about halfway through the movie and even more surprised by the ending... and I'm rarely caught off guard like that but this movie caught me twice with the unexpected twists and turns of the plot.
But I didn't like the role they gave to Hayley Mills. She did a beautiful job playing this role, but we are accustomed to seeing her in Disney movies with happy endings and it was a little disturbing to see her end up in such a tragic turn of events. It was like killing off Pat Boone or Debbie Reynolds.
The silliest part of the movie was when she met her future husband and he commented about her being an American... then she responded with her British accent. I think I would have changed those particular lines in that movie. It stuck out like a sore thumb. Not Hayley's fault. It was the director's fault for not changing or deleting those lines with Hayley in the role.
The singer who they chose for Hayley's singing voice was much too old and too deep to be the singing voice of a young girl like Hayley was at the time. From the warble and oscillation, that singing voice sounded like an Italian opera singer, at least 20 years Hayley's senior. Certainly not a very young woman. The song really didn't add to the movie in any way. I'm not sure why they included this scene unless it was a special favor for the singer.
Although Hayley was quite a lovely young woman at the time, I would have to agree with one of the other reviewer's comments about anorexia. You could clearly see each rib bone in Hayley's chest above the neckline of her dresses. But also keep in mind that "thin was in" in the sixties and all of the girls wanted to look like "Twiggy" who was a very bone-thin, anorexic fashion symbol at the time... and all the males expected the same from the girls. Anorexia was not labeled and was actually encouraged in the 60's and 70's until Karen Carpenter died. It was not until then that public opinion went through a drastic change.
As with most older British movies, they have a bit of trouble clearly expressing the plot and continuity to the audience. There was not enough explanation of the conspirator's reasons or details on their prior collusion. The ending was also a bit muddy. It looked like they ended the movie in the middle of a scene.
It would have been a lot of help if they had included closed captioning or subtitles with this movie. Old movies like this didn't use dialogue coaches, so the actors would mumble and string words together in the local dialects from where they had grown up so it was difficult to follow from time to time, simply from lack of enunciation. It is possible that they could have digitally improved the sound as well.
There's no doubt the storyline was quite filled with surprising twists. I guess in my case, I just didn't care for seeing Hayley Mills end up as a casualty. I kept waiting for her to appear at the end, hoping her demise had only been a setup to trick the guilty into a confession.
Summary of Endless Night
True-blue Agatha Christie fans know better than anyone that the creator of Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot did not always write crime-solving procedurals. Endless Night, published in 1968, is a perfect example of the moody, psychological thriller Christie sometimes explored, particularly in the late years of her career. This 1972 adaptation, scripted and directed by seasoned British filmmaker Sidney Gilliat, is indeed a strange duck: a compelling tale of small, unsettling phenomena and events, but with no defining mystery, no apparent crime to pull the details together--not until quite late in the story, that is. Hayley Mills and Hywel Bennett, partnered together in several films (The Family Way, Twisted Nerve) during the 1960s and '70s, play an American heiress and an underemployed London chauffeur who marry and move into a dream house designed for them by a world-class architect (Per Oscarsson). In short order, things begin to get mighty weird. A crazy old woman stomps around the couple's property, whispering ambiguous warnings. The bride's nuisance of a sister (Britt Ekland) moves in, and a handful of disapproving relatives keep popping up to belittle the hero. Where this is all leading is entirely unexpected--Christie and Gilliat really have us falling without a parachute for a while--yet it's exciting and tragic all at once. Nice performances all around, with special admiration for Oscarsson's role as the dying architect. --Tom KeoghArt House & International DVD Video
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