Eyes in the Night - 1942

Edward Arnold is one of the great "shouters" in classic Hollywood, able to wield belligerent but sharp dialogue at a high decibel, often accompanied by arm and face gesticulations that makes everyone else in the cast look like they're not moving (or small, Arnold himself was 5'10").

But in some of his roles, Arnold backs off considerably in the pyrotechnics. As the blind detective Duncan MacLain in Eyes in the Night, he presents a somewhat softer verbal delivery but it is still Edward Arnold's elaboratre movements, even though he is playing a character who simply can't see what's going around him. Allen Jenkins steps in as his "eyes" by describing the scene around them and the detective visualizes it in his mind, and with the benefit of his very hyper skilled seeing-eye dog Friday (who can open doors with his mouth, climb walls, navigate traps), the retired detective can put together clues and size up what's really going on.

A very young Donna Reed (as Barbara Lawry) and Ann Harding (as Norma Lawry) have a bitter and contentious relationship as step-daughter and step-mom, and it all gets tangled up into a story about Nazi spies running a weapons espionage operation right under the nose of a weapons designer and a local theatre company where the death of a "ham actor" (John Emery playing Paul Gerente) starts to peal back the layers of deception that are all around our main characters.

The dog Friday is an amazing stunt animal, and Edward Arnold using judo and wrestling assailants (he gets attacked a lot in Eyes in the Night, where being blind is made harder by assassins running loose), combined with the usual mechanics of an investigator putting together clues, makes this film an unusual and well-done B-level (or sub-A) detective film.

Donna Reed is good as a vicious step-daughter, heartlessly cruel until she sees the lies she's been telling herself implode. Ann Harding plays a long-suffering wife and step-mom who for awhile is the only one who can sense what's really afoot. Arnold's detective is handicapped, but he takes the time to mostly work at night and to knock out electrical illumination, something that puts his opponents on his level. A couple of other side-stories are well done and help fill out this tale directed by Fred Zinnemann.

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Original Page July 20, 2024