Cinema Talk

Pretty much just an American-ized version of Marcel Carne’s Le jour se léve, which is more or less, a very good thing. While I can’t give the film any points for originality, it is still nice to basically rewatch one of my favorite movies – except there’s now different actors. The casting is pretty smart, though. If there’s any one that can recapture the personality of Jean Gabin, than it is certainly Henry Fonda. It’s certainly a case of inexperience, but I still think that both are the two best actors of their respective generations. Maybe Fonda ends up coming off a bit more talky, but that might just be a result of the language barrier. There’s not really much more else to say about this, considering that I probably already said it in my review of Le jour se léve, but I will add that The Long Night probably has the technical advantage. It doesn’t have the dated over-lit look of its French predecessor, but instead, a much more “brutal” aesthetic, which underscores the story’s bleak tone much better.