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Alan Ladd's Jaguar Productions made this film for Warner Brothers and Ladd made sure a lot of friends got work here. A quick glance of the credits will show that almost the whole cast worked with Ladd at some point in their careers. And in a prominent role as the boyfriend of Natalie Wood is Richard Anderson who was at one time Ladd's stepson-in-law being married to Sue Carol Ladd's daughter by a former marriage. Alan Ladd always liked having familiar faces and friends working with or for him.
A Cry In The Night is about a cop's daughter being kidnapped by a deranged peeping Tom in a lover's lane. Natalie Wood is the daughter and Raymond Burr is the kidnapper and he slugs Richard Anderson and steals his car as well as Natalie in his getaway.
The curious thing about A Cry In The Night is that both victim and perpetrator have serious parent issues. Wood is the daughter of an overprotective father who happens to be a police captain played by Edmond O'Brien. Burr's bad luck to kidnap a cop's daughter because the whole police force of the town is after him now, working 24/7. She's afraid to bring Anderson home to meet the folks because no one is good enough for daddy's little girl.
But that's nothing compared to what Burr is dealing with with Mumzie Dearest played by Carol Veazie. An overprotective mother has left Burr with social problems, an inability to relate to the opposite sex. At times Burr exudes menace and at times and sometimes the same time Burr is so childlike he's pitiable. No doubt Burr's character was inspired by Lennie from Of Mice And Men. In fact I'm surprised Raymond Burr never considered doing a remake of that John Steinbeck classic. He would have been wonderful in the part. When he's on screen Burr steals the film and when he's off you're waiting to see him return.
At the time the film was being made Raymond Burr and Natalie Wood were on some studio arranged dates. Very arranged because after his death we learned that Raymond Burr was a closeted gay man. Natalie Wood found that out earlier than most of us, but in a recent biography she said that she enjoyed Burr's company.
Brian Donlevy has the role of the no nonsense police captain overseeing the manhunt. A Cry In The Night holds up well after over 50 years and could use a remake today. If it was remade, who would you cast?
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Intriguing themes, solid performances by noir stalwarts Burr, Donleavy and O'Brien, save 50s police procedural
When Raymond Burr's face (grotesquely lighted by John F. Seitz) looms out of the shrubbery at Lovers' Loop, he adds A Cry in the Night to his long string of films in which he cemented his reputation as the noir cycle's most indispensable and unforgettable creep. He's prowling the petting grounds looking for a girl, and doesn't care how he gets her. Assaulting the male half (Richard Anderson) of a necking couple, he kidnaps the other (Natalie Wood), spiriting her off to a den he's fixed up in an abandoned brickyard. This time, though, there's a catch to Burr's villainy: He's a dim-witted hulk, a childish monster akin to Lennie in Of Mice And Men.
The police mistake the dazed Anderson for a drunk and lock him up. Only when a doctor suspects concussion does his story emerge, leading captain Brian Donleavy to mobilize a dragnet for Wood and her abductor. As it happens, Wood's father (Edmond O'Brien) is one of their own, a hot-headed, rigid cop out for blood - he throws a punch at the already reeling Anderson. Meanwhile Burr plies Wood with apricot pie and sequined gowns, as she desperately tries to flee. A break in the case comes when Burr's mother calls in to report her 32-year-old son missing....
Along with Burr, A Cry in the Night unites stalwarts of the cycle Donleavy and O'Brien; even the familiar voice in the opening narration belongs to Alan Ladd, who appeared in this director Frank Tuttle's This Gun For Hire 14 years earlier. The movie stays a pretty standard police procedural, albeit with a few intriguing touches. It offers as subtexts some period glimpses into dysfunctional parenting. His spinster sister, another victim of his vigilance against beaux come a-couring, accuses the overprotective O'Brien of driving Wood to Lovers' Loop and hence to peril.
Even less wholesome is Carol Veazie as Burr's doting, sweet-toothed mother. Managing simultaneously to suggest Dame Judith Anderson, Jean Stapleton and Doris Roberts, she shuffles around drinking coffee in her horse-blanket bathrobe, whining about that missing slice of apricot pie. Nineteen-fifty-six, some may recall, was the high-water mark of a national panic about `Momism,' a threat deemed scarcely less perilous to the republic than the international Communist conspiracy; Veazie endures as one of its most formidable operatives (her successors would include the unseen Mrs. Bates in Psycho, Angela Lansbury's Mrs. Iselin in The Manchurian Candidate, and Marjorie Bennet's Dehlia Flagg in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?).
Early in the movie, before the tight walls of his world come tumbling down, O'Brien pours himself a beer and waits for the nightly movie on TV. When it starts, he sighs, `Another one of those cop pictures,' and switches it off. There he was, in the Indian Summer of the noir cycle, and couldn't care less. Couldn't he have forseen that, almost 50 years later, there would be an avid audience for those cop pictures - even the ones starring him?
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A Rare 'Family Noir'
"A Cry in the Night" starts fast: an idealized fifties couple parked in a convertible at the local Inspiration Point, a conked boyfriend, a kidnapped teenage girl (inevitably, the police captain's daughter). From there it fans out into a number of ideas, most of which wander into the dark and disappear, none of which are delivered with any particular inspiration.
We get the question of personal responsibility and "getting involved" when no one else on the scene responds to Natalie Wood's cries for help- from which the title derives- with anything more than mockery. We get the question of how a monster is made when we meet Raymond Burr's horrific and self-absorbed mother. We get the idea of Natalie Wood, victim, fighting to survive by forging a personal connection with her captor. We get the idea that her home life was another form of captivity. Nonetheless, all we really get is a police chase, and it's a pretty mundane one.
From Raymond Burr, we get an interpretation of an unstable but very human mentally-challenged person that builds in places on Lon Chaney Jr.'s performance in "Of Mice and Men", but is still just an unconvincing sketch. From nearly every one else, we get a lot of scenery-nibbling where chewing is called for: Edmond O'Brien, as the missing girl's father, takes his anger level to about a seven and is always willing to stop and quibble about minor distractions. Natalie Wood does a fine job, but knowing what she had been through personally by this time in her young life makes her character's situation more than a bit painful.
Perhaps fortunately, sexual tension is greatly minimized by the era of the film: it's there, eventually, but a much more overt rape threat might truly have demonized Burr's character and thus done a disservice to people who were already marginalized in society.
Unsurprisingly, the subplot in which the Taggart family problems are brought to light by the ordeal at hand is absurdly simplistic and about as subtle and deft as a sledgehammer.
It all moves briskly enough, and Burr's creepy lair is a plus, along with the exciting situation, but there's a much better film in this material. To see a fairly similar story in far more skilled hands (only a year earlier), check out William Wyler's "The Desperate Hours".
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For once, I didn't like Edmund O'Brien's performance...
Edmund O'Brien is one of my favorite actors. He was able to play cynical and he was able to play tough. And, with his rather ugly mug, he was the perfect film noir hero or anti-hero. However, "A Cry in the Night" is the rarest of films--an Edmund O'Brien film that I did not particularly like--or at least his character. He was, in my opinion, the weakest link in the film.
The film begins with two young lovers (Richard Anderson and Natalie Wood) out at lover's lane when they notice some strange man lurking in the bushes--staring at them. Anderson goes to see who this guy is and sees a much larger and very crazy Raymond Burr--who proceeds to beak the stuffing out of Anderson. And, following this attack, Burr e kidnaps Wood and drags her away to his secret lair. His motivation and character, though not realistic, is pretty cool--and fun to watch unfold throughout the film.
Naturally, the police eventually get involved--especially since Wood turns out to be the daughter of tough cop O'Brien. But, as he's not on duty and this crime strikes close to home, Brian Donlevy plays the detective who is in charge of the case--and I liked his character. But O'Brien--what a rather one-dimensional and annoying guy. He is, at times, almost cartoon-like--with his snarling and growling...and not acting the least bit like a professional. He is, to put it bluntly, pretty annoying.
Overall, the film has some interesting moments and is worth seeing--just don't expect a particularly inspired movie. For fans of noir or O'Brien, it's worth seeing---for all others, it's just a time-passer.
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This 50's time capsule is a prelude to "Psycho"
This little-known sordid shocker played as part of a Natalie Wood homage on TCM. The action is set in Los Angeles, "although it could be any city, your city", intones the voice-over. Yeah, right. Natalie, 18, is abducted from lovers' lane by a voyeur-psycho (Raymond Burr) who slugs her beau (Richard Anderson) and absconds with his car. Her father (Edmond O'Brien) is a police captain who happens to be a sexist, macho, insensitive, over-protective, overbearing, filthy, repulsive S.O.B. and probably a Republican to boot. He is neglectful to his wife and has shouted down his sister into the life of a sterile old maid - a plan he seems to be enacting again with his daughter. He would probably also be a homophobe if he had any notion that such a thing as homosexuals even existed.
The details of police procedure are laughable. The slugged-out beau gets first mistaken for a drunk and put in the drunk tank. When a doctor intervenes and diagnoses a concussion, his story checks out but he still has to contend with the captain's brutality, fatherly possessiveness and attempts at psychological castration.
Meanwhile, through another coincidence, the police stumbles on the abductor's mother - an even more unhealthy version, although living, than "Psychos"'s dead and embalmed mama, which leads to a break in the case. We are asked to believe that those cops - who don't have the slightest element of psychology or know how to raise their own children - immediately associate a missing 32-year-old male living with his possessive mother with a potential sexual psycho who is probably the abductor. They turn out to be right.
Given what Natalie has to put up with at home, one has to wonder if she wouldn't be better off with her abductor for understanding and comfort. She limps through half the movie in a torn-up skirt, thus fulfilling the obligatory prurient cheesecake element for a film of that genre, budget and period.
The climax takes place in a brickworks factory, the dirt and slime being a fitting visual complement to what goes on in the male characters' minds.
David Buttolph's incidental music tries hard to make this sound like "Rebel Without A Cause" but is too generic to make a mark.
The film as a whole is a priceless - if laughable - time capsule of attitudes towards crime, sex, cops, victims, perpetrators and anything and anyone that is slightly out of the ordinary. It's enough to turn any "Momma's boy" into a "pinko commie" or a "psycho"...
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great performance by Raymond Burr
A brilliant performance by Raymond Burr as a mentally-challenged man who feels stifled by his mother makes "A Cry in the Night" a good watch. The film also stars Brian Donlevy and Edmund O'Brien.
Natalie Wood plays Elizabeth, the teenaged daughter of police Captain Taggart (O'Brien) involved with Owen (Anderson) - the two of them are together in a lovers' lane when Owen sees someone watching them. He gives chase and gets knocked out for his trouble. The voyeur, Harold Loftus (Burr) kidnaps Elizabeth.
Anyone who's watched the news or the ID channel knows that as kidnappings go, this was pretty benign. We also know a little bit more about how to handle a kidnapper - Elizabeth finally catches on and tries to befriend him. Meanwhile, her hot-tempered father is frantically looking for her and comes up against Harold's overprotective mother (Carol Veazie).
Burr is just the saddest character in this, it's heartbreaking. Natalie is very pretty and, as we have seen in other films, good at histrionics.
Since it was made in 1956, the film has a few questionable or politically incorrect moments, like when a fellow lovers' lane person hears Elizabeth screams and says, "Slap her again. They like it." And there's the subplot of Taggart's sister still unmarried because her brother broke them up - apparently she didn't care how lousy he was since he was breathing. And Elizabeth's mother tells her husband "not to scare away" the one Elizabeth has on the hook.
Schools today sometimes ban these politically incorrect films - ones that are much more blatant than this. I think it's a great idea for new generations to see them and understand how women were thought of and what was important to them - husbands.
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Edmond O'Brien as a policeman having his daughter grabbed by a debile brute
I was not particularly fond of this picture. It's a rather sordid naturalistic drama about loneliness, a young man living with and hating his possessive mother seeking desperately a way out by going rounds at midnight as a peeping Tom, and sees Natalie Wood (18 years old) being kissed by a well-to-do young man in a very smashing car. He slugs the boy and steals the car with Natalie Wood in it, whom he brings to a place where no one ever can find them. The problem is that Natalie Wood's farther is Edmond O'Brien and a choleric policeman.
None of the characters are sympathetic, there is very little humanity in this, and Raymond Burr as his mother's victim is almost painful to look at - this was his last film before he became Perry Mason. It's a difficult part, he does what he can out of it with more or less embarrassing results, while Edmond O'Brien vents his choler on both his family and the police force. Of course it can only end one way.
It's almost a Theodore Dreiser kind of intrigue, with none of the characters being more than ordinary and with almost an enforced effort to make the thriller exciting, but Raymond Burr and Natalie Wood are very far from Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake in Frank Tuttle's previous "THis Gun For Hire"..
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EN ESPAÑOL
Coincidiendo con la mitad de la década de los cincuenta, la sociedad norteamericana vivía una de sus paradojas más sangrantes. Esta fue la aparición de un periodo de creciente progreso en sus clases medias –el tan cacareado American Way of Life-, en su confluencia con las consecuencias del maccartysmo, siendo esta una de las manifestaciones del marcado anticomunismo existente en su esencia como pueblo. Fue algo que sacudió los cimientos del cine de su tiempo, como testigo directo o indirecto de dicha circunstancia. Así pues, el cine policíaco o noir, tuvo un claro reflejo de dichas tensiones por partida doble. Por un lado, un maestro como Fritz Lang utilizaba dicha circunstancia, para establecer dos de sus títulos más admirables, que además cerrarían su periodo norteamericano –en especial WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS (Mientras Nueva York duerme, 1955), que sigo considerando su obra cumbre-. Pero al mismo tiempo, y desde una vertiente opuesta, dominada por el moralismo y un matiz claramente conservador, surgían exponentes que en apariencia buscaban la plasmación de situaciones límite, por lo general centrándose en sucesos que violentaban el ámbito familiar, para concluir apareciendo como una apología de las bondades de dicho universo, como salvaguarda incorruptible del espíritu americano. Podríamos, a este respecto, mencionar decenas de ejemplos. Por ceñirnos a dicho ámbito temporal citemos referentes como RAMSOM (Rapto, 1956. Alex Segal), o THE DESPERATE HOURS (Horas desesperadas, 1955. William Wyler), en su momento controvertidas por su aparente crudeza, pero que en el fondo apenas podían esconder su tufo conservador, unido a una nula capacidad para explorar matices revulsivos en sus respectivas plasmaciones fílmicas.
En buena medida, aunque insertando dichos parámetros en el ámbito de una serie B, que en no pocos momentos nos acerca a los modos televisivos del momento, Frank Tuttle rodaría el penúltimo titulo de una obra desigual que asomaría sus raíces en pleno periodo silente, ligada por completo al seguidismo del cine de género, y que curiosamente conocería el amparo de la productora de Alan Ladd -Ladd Enterprises-, la estrella a la que ayudaría a consolidar, al realizar uno de los títulos que cimentaron la fama del actor –THE GUN FOR HIRE (El cuervo, 1942)-. Dentro de dichas características, aparece A CRY IN THE NIGHT (1956) –que solo se ha podido contemplar en España en lejanos pases televisivos, y recientemente en edición digital, bajo el título Un grito en la noche-, una producción de bajo presupuesto y escasa duración, distribuída por la Warner, quizá buscando con ello la consolidación de una de sus estrellas juveniles; la prometedora Natalie Wood. En medio de dicha coyuntura, nos encontramos con una discreta crónica policiaca, descrita en el ámbito de una sola noche, centrado en la presencia de ese personaje desequilibrado, encarnado con tanta sensibilidad como cierta inestabilidad por Raymond Burr. Este recreará en la película a un muchacho ya encaramado a una madurez quizá no asumida, dominado por una personalidad simplista, y la influencia de una madre castrante, que en poco ha hecho por ayudarlo y más, por el contrario, imbuirlo en la inestabilidad emocional y psíquica de alguien, que ha carecido de una normalizada relación con sus semejantes y, de forma muy especial, con el ámbito femenino.
Harold se encuentra actuando como vouyeur en la denominada “Colina del Amor”, utilizada por tantas parejas que, en sus coches, describen sus relaciones en la noche de un pequeño busque de la gran ciudad. Hasta esos momentos, el film de Tuttle ha adoptado un extraño e inconsistente tono de comedia, que se interrumpirá bruscamente con un primer plano de este personaje determinante, en cuyo comportamiento se dirimirá el contrapunto dramático que, a partir de entonces, rodeará esta pequeña y, justo es reconocerlo, poco distinguida producción de bajo presupuesto, de poco más de setenta minutos de duración, y unos modos narrativos que se asemejan a las producciones televisivas de aquellos tiempos, en los que Tuttle ya se había introducido tímidamente. Esa sensación de unidad temporal y de acción, o el propio esquematismo de sus personales, serán elementos esenciales para definir un relato conciso, eficaz en algunos momentos, y formulario en no pocas ocasiones, que se caracterizará por disponer de una galería de personajes escasamente atractivos. No se si serían los objetivos de los responsables de la película, pero el espectador no encuentra en ninguno de los seres que pueblan el relato, el menor atisbo de humanidad, lo que contribuye a provocar un extraño desinterés, que solo se despierta en determinadas ocasiones.
Y es que tras el secuestro de Elizabeth, A CRY IN THE NIGHT se articula en dos escenarios. Por un lado la narración de las pesquisas de la policía, siempre acompañados por Owen, el novio de esta, y de otro, en las secuencias desarrolladas entre la retenida y el propio Harold, en donde se dirime un juego psicológico entre ambos personajes, al objeto de encontrar el secuestrador la estima de la muchacha, y por parte de ella intentar fingir dicho acercamiento, para buscar la posibilidad de huir. Todo ello sucederá en el escondrijo que el deficiente Harold tiene en una fábrica abandonada de ladrillos –un detalle de escenografía bastante conseguido-, pudiendo ver en estos pasajes, un precedente nada desdeñable de roles que posteriormente contemplaríamos en THE COLLECTOR (El coleccionista, 1965. William Wyler), o en la más cercana ¡ÁTAME! (1990, Pedro Almodóvar). Es más, pocos años después, el cine norteamericano proporcionaría quizá el rol del desequilibrado más célebre jamás contemplado en la pantalla. Me refiero, por supuesto, al Norman Bates de PSYCHO (Psicosis, 1960. Alfred Hitchcock), con el que podríamos establecer alguna semejanza. Ligazón que en ambos casos se plantea en la existencia de una madre castrante y opresiva, que en la obra maestra de Hitchcock se plasmó de forma tan original y transgresora, y aquí, por el contrario, aparece descrita como en ser desagradable y egoísta, tan solo preocupado por que su hijo la surta de dulces a su regreso.
Será ese el punto de contacto con la investigación policial, en la que también se dirimirá el conflicto, centrado en la responsabilidad sobre la que intentarán competir los mandos que encarnan –con considerable desgana- Brian Donlevy y Edmond O’Brian. Sobre este último se dirimirá una relación de excesiva dependencia en torno a su hija secuestrada, a la que pese a su juventud sigue considerando una niña, siendo el causante involuntario del secuestro, al no haber permitido a Elizabeth siquiera que esta le presentara a su novio, bajo el fundado temor de que su progenitor lo rechazara. Pese a esa oposición en torno al padre de la secuestrada y la madre del secuestrador, lo cierto es que el film de Tuttle se desperdicia en el desarrollo de una investigación rápida y previsible y, por otro lado, en una serie de secuencias entre un esforzado aunque no siempre afortunado Raymond Burr, empeñado en insuflar patetismo y humanidad a un rol que en contados momentos logra emerger de lo estereotipado.
En definitiva, estoy convencido que la razón de ser de este policíaco de tan limitado alcance, fue la de favorecer el estatus adulto de una Natalie Wodd que se estaba preparando por la Warner como una de sus grandes estrellas, y a la que habíamos contemplado en exponentes inmediatamente precedentes, de considerable mayor calado artístico. Sin embargo, por encima de sus limitaciones, justo es reconocer que en determinados pasajes, A CRY IN THE NIGHT alberga instantes en los que da el tono de esas posibilidades, por lo general desaprovechadas, de un consistente estudio psicológico, finalmente diluido en una proclama de alcance moralista. Me refiero a secuencias como aquella de alcance confesional, en la que Harold confiesa ante Elizabeth el odio que siente hacia su madre, y asume la vivencia de su soledad e incapacidad para relacionarse, especialmente con mujeres. Poco antes, su propia madre, tras ser presionada por los agentes de policía, y junto a una foto de Harold, reconoce la debilidad que siempre ha guiado a su hijo. Finalmente, el episodio de acoso hacia el secuestrador, se caracterizará por un dinamismo en la planificación, con utilización de encuadres crispados y un notable uso dramático de la escenografía, logrando un alcance trepidante aunque, como no podía ser de otra manera, culmine con esa llamada de Taggart a asumir una nueva actitud antes su hija, en la que su novio tenga la necesaria cabida. Todo queda dentro, pues, del influjo de la familia americana.
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MY WEB PAGE TO NATALIE WOOD
