The Long Night (1947)

After killing a dog trainer (Vincent Price), a working class man (Henry Fonda) sits barricaded in his room reflecting on the the events which lead up to the murder while the police attempt to force him out of the room. A remake of Marcel Carne's LE JOUR SE LEVE (1939) and directed by Anatole Litvak (THE SNAKE PIT). While I have nothing against remakes on principle, what this movie does to Carne's masterpiece is simply pitiful. The miscasting of Henry Fonda as the doomed factory worker compromised the film from the beginning but still, it doesn't prepare us for the ghastly mawkish "happy" Hollywood ending that has been tacked on to what originally was a bleak slice of cinematic poetry. The film lacks the atmosphere of fatalism that permeated the French classic. The rest of the major players: Barbara Bel Geddes (in her film debut), the undervalued Ann Dvorak and Vincent Price do their best but they can't surmount the film's inadequacies. Dimitri Tiomkin's insistent score doesn't do the film any favors. With Charles McGraw, Moroni Olsen and Elisha Cook Jr.