This Is the Night

Directed by Frank Tuttle, This Is the Night details the complications that ensue after a man (Cary Grant’s Stephen) unexpectedly returns home early from the Olympics – with Stephen’s sudden appearance forcing his cheating wife (Thelma Todd’s Claire) and her lover (Roland Young’s Gerald) to concoct an elaborate lie involving Lili Damita’s Germaine. It’s a fun, over-the-top premise that’s lamentably employed to sluggish and uninvolving effect by Tuttle, as the filmmaker, working from Benjamin Glazer and George Marion Jr.’s screenplay, delivers a slow-moving endeavor that contains little in the way of an entry point for the viewer – with the arms-length atmosphere compounded by a narrative littered with needless, time-wasting elements and attributes. And while the picture admittedly does contain a very small handful of agreeable sequences, including (and especially) a funny bit involving Claire and Gerald’s efforts at surreptitiously passing answers along to Germaine without Stephen noticing, This Is the Night builds towards an anticlimactic (and, frankly, somewhat interminable) final stretch that ensures the whole thing concludes on a seriously lackluster note – thus confirming the movie’s place as a misfire that squanders its agreeable setup and game performances.

*1/2 out of ****