This is the Night (1932) on Jan. 9, 2010 on TCM
Posted: January 9th, 2011, 8:54 pm
This is the Night (1932) is being broadcast right now on TCM. The first film of Cary Grant, it is set in Paris with Lili Damita, Thelma Todd, Charlie Ruggles and Irving Bacon, who has a sizable role for once. Grant first bounces into view carrying a large number of javelins and singing about a girl named Yvonne--though his saucy wife (Thelma Todd) is out with Roland Young (until she loses her dress, but that's another story).
A very naughty pre-code farce, the film is absolutely beautiful to look at, with shimmering blue light during the first stylized interval on a Paris street and subsequent scenes at night in Venice photographed by Victor Milner under the direction of Frank Tuttle---though the arresting visual quality of the film--with unusual framing, angles, wipes and miniature landscapes of the film were designed by a recent arrival from Europe, Jean Negulesco, whose work was noted by neophyte Cary Grant. Encouraging the recent immigrant and putting in a good word with his employers, Grant, according to Negulesco's autobiography, very kindly arranged to have Paramount hire the starving (literally) artist, who went on to design the more nightmarish and harrowing scenes in The Story of Temple Drake and eventually became an exceptionally good director (at least in my book).
Btw, Cary Grant is physically different at this early stage--large, almost fleshy (Katharine Hepburn always claimed he was a bit porky in the '30s) and not in as much control of every movement as he would become, his hair has a distinct wave and a widow's peak, with a raffishness that had some rough edges still, enabling him to appear potentially dangerous. His enormous, dimpled chin seems to be his most expressive feature at times, though he was still able to express longing, anger and desire with a minimum of gestures, even then. Did anyone ever stand with his hands in his pockets in quite the way that Grant did?
I haven't consciously seen too many Lili Damita films before (except for Friends and Lovers with Lili separating Laurence Olivier and Adolphe Menjou, which is being shown tonight as well), but she seems to be the tempestuous type, though I'm not sure if she evokes sympathy. The scene when Roland Young and Charlie Ruggles get drunk and say "I love you" to one another is very funny on way too many levels, including the moment when Charlie dubs Roland "the menace in Venice" even if he is "awfully doggish in the mangerish". I like Charlie's promise to get Thelma Todd "under his spell" as well. I am reminded again how deeply appealing Charlie Ruggles could be when he had something to do on screen.
I am most familiar with director Frank Tuttle's work with Alan Ladd in the extraordinary star turn he did in This Gun for Hire and Lucky Jordan, also with Ladd and the debut of Helen Walker. (Lucky Jordan debuts on TCM on Jan 26, at 8:00PM ET). I think that This is the Night could have used a Lubitsch more than a Tutttle at the wheel, but it has some charm.
A very naughty pre-code farce, the film is absolutely beautiful to look at, with shimmering blue light during the first stylized interval on a Paris street and subsequent scenes at night in Venice photographed by Victor Milner under the direction of Frank Tuttle---though the arresting visual quality of the film--with unusual framing, angles, wipes and miniature landscapes of the film were designed by a recent arrival from Europe, Jean Negulesco, whose work was noted by neophyte Cary Grant. Encouraging the recent immigrant and putting in a good word with his employers, Grant, according to Negulesco's autobiography, very kindly arranged to have Paramount hire the starving (literally) artist, who went on to design the more nightmarish and harrowing scenes in The Story of Temple Drake and eventually became an exceptionally good director (at least in my book).
Btw, Cary Grant is physically different at this early stage--large, almost fleshy (Katharine Hepburn always claimed he was a bit porky in the '30s) and not in as much control of every movement as he would become, his hair has a distinct wave and a widow's peak, with a raffishness that had some rough edges still, enabling him to appear potentially dangerous. His enormous, dimpled chin seems to be his most expressive feature at times, though he was still able to express longing, anger and desire with a minimum of gestures, even then. Did anyone ever stand with his hands in his pockets in quite the way that Grant did?
I haven't consciously seen too many Lili Damita films before (except for Friends and Lovers with Lili separating Laurence Olivier and Adolphe Menjou, which is being shown tonight as well), but she seems to be the tempestuous type, though I'm not sure if she evokes sympathy. The scene when Roland Young and Charlie Ruggles get drunk and say "I love you" to one another is very funny on way too many levels, including the moment when Charlie dubs Roland "the menace in Venice" even if he is "awfully doggish in the mangerish". I like Charlie's promise to get Thelma Todd "under his spell" as well. I am reminded again how deeply appealing Charlie Ruggles could be when he had something to do on screen.
I am most familiar with director Frank Tuttle's work with Alan Ladd in the extraordinary star turn he did in This Gun for Hire and Lucky Jordan, also with Ladd and the debut of Helen Walker. (Lucky Jordan debuts on TCM on Jan 26, at 8:00PM ET). I think that This is the Night could have used a Lubitsch more than a Tutttle at the wheel, but it has some charm.