Night Has a Thousand Eyes (1948)

★ 6.8 1h 21m IMDb

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When heiress Jean Courtland attempts suicide, her fiancée Elliott Carson probes her relationship with John Triton. In flashback, we see how stage mentalist Triton starts having terrifying flashes of true precognition. Now years later, he desperately tries to prevent tragedies in the Courtland family.

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Cast

Edward G. Robinson as John Triton Died 1973 · Bucharest, Romania Edward G. Robinson (born Emanuel Goldenberg; December 12, 1893 – January 26, 1973) was a Romanian-born American actor and political activist. Although he played a wide range of characters, he is best...

Gail Russell as Jean Courtland Died 1961 · Chicago, Illinois, USA Gail Russell was an American screen and television actress who is probably best remembered for her role as Stella Meredith in the 1944 film The Uninvited..

John Lund as Elliott Carson Died 1992 · Rochester, New York, USA John Lund (6 February 1911 - 10 May 1992) was an American film actor who is probably best remembered for his role in the film A Foreign Affair (1948), directed by Billy Wilder. Description above from...

Virginia Bruce as Jenny Died 1982 · Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Virginia Bruce (September 29, 1910 – February 24, 1982) was an American actress and singer. Born Helen Virginia Briggs in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In 1928, she m...

William Demarest as Lt. Shawn Died 1983 · Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Carl William Demarest (February 27, 1892 – December 27, 1983) was an American character actor, known for playing Uncle Charley in My Three Sons. A veteran of Wo...

Richard Webb as Peter Vinson Died 1993 · Bloomington, Illinois, USA Richard Webb (September 9, 1915 – June 19, 1993) was a film, television and radio actor. He was born in Bloomington, Illinois. Description above from the Wikipedia article Richard Webb, licensed unde...

Director John Farrow

Cast Edward G. Robinson, Gail Russell, John Lund, Virginia Bruce, William Demarest, Richard Webb, Jerome Cowan, Onslow Stevens, John Alexander, Roman Bohnen

John Chard 8/10 Dec 13, 2018

The Mental Wizard Curse.

Night Has a Thousand Eyes is directed by John Farrow and adapted to screenplay by Barre Lyndon and Jonathan Latimer from the novel of the same name written by Cornell Woolrich. It stars Edward G. Robinson, Gail Russell, John Lund, Virginia Bruce, William Demarest, Richard Webb and Jerome Cowan. Music is scored by Victor Young and cinematography by John F. Seitz.

John Triton (Robinson) is a nightclub fortune teller who suddenly finds he really does posses psychic ability. As his predictions become more bleaker, Triton struggles with what was once a gift but now is very much a curse.

During a visually sumptuous beginning to the film, a girl is saved from suicide, it's an attention grabbing start and sets the tone for what will follow. Mood and strangulated atmosphere born out by photographic styles, craft of acting and Young's spine tingling score are the keys to the film's success, with the pervading sense of doom ensuring the narrative never falls into mawkish hell. It's a film that shares thematic similarities with a 1934 Claude Rains picture titled The Clairvoyant, only here we enter noir territory for Triton's cursed journey, where as the Rains movie was ultimately leading us to the savage idiocy of mob justice.

Farrow's (The Big Clock/Where Danger Lives) film falls into a small quasi supernatural group of black and whites that are formed around a carnival/psychic act. It's a situation for film that film noir makers sadly didn't explore more often, making the likes of Night Has a Thousand Eyes, Nightmare Alley and The Spiritualist little treasures to be cherished. Farrow gets as much suspense out of the story as he can, of which he is helped enormously by the great work of Robinson. At a time when the HUAC was breathing down his neck, Robinson turns in a definitive portrayal of a man caught in a trap, his fate sealed. His face haunted and haggard, his spoken words sorrowful and hushed, Robinson is simply terrific.

The world of prognostication gets a film noir make-over, death under the stars indeed. 8/10