Endless Night (1972)

User Rating:

5.9/10   

Director:

Sidney Gilliat

Writers:

Agatha Christie (novel)
Sidney Gilliat (writer)

Release Date:

September 1972 (UK)

Genre:

Crime | Drama | Horror | Mystery | Thriller

Tagline:

Victim... or killer?

Plot:

A woman is hired to scare someone to death. |

Plot Keywords:

Rolls Royce | Camera Shot Of Feet | Mental Illness | House | Art Lover

Cast

Hayley Mills	...	Fenella 'Ellie' Thomsen
Hywel Bennett	...	Michael Rogers
Britt Ekland	...	Greta
George Sanders	...	Andrew Lippincott
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
David Bauer	...	Uncle Frank
Peter Bowles	...	Reuben Brown
Geoffrey Chater	...	Coroner
Patience Collier	...	Miss Townsend
Windsor Davies	...	Sergeant Reene
Mischa De La Motte	...	Maynard
Walter Gotell	...	Constantine
David Healy	...	Jason
Helen Horton	...	Aunt Beth
Robert Keegan	...	Innkeeper
Lois Maxwell	...	Cora Walker Brown
Robert O'Neil	...	Broker
Per Oscarsson	...	Santonix
Aubrey Richards	...	Dr. Philpott
Madge Ryan	...	Michael's Mother
Ann Way	...	Mrs. Philpott

Also Known As:

Agatha Christie's Endless Night

Runtime:

99 min | USA:95 min

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Iceland:16 | UK:15 (re-rating) (1989) | UK:AA (original rating) | Singapore:M18 | Australia:M | USA:Not Rated | Finland:K-16

Filming Locations:

Albergo San Pietro, Positano, Salerno, Campania, Italy

Company:

EMI Films

Trivia:

The lyrics that Hayley Mills sings to the tune of The Doors' song "End Of The Night" are from William Blake's "Auguries of Innocence" (ca. 1803). "Every morn and every night Some to misery are born. Every morn and every night Some are born to sweet delight. Some are born to sweet delight, Some are born to endless night."

Not so great if you're an Agatha Christie fan

I won't say it's a bad film, but I have to believe the liberties taken with the adaptation of the story go well beyond the nudity and modern setting. (I will say that the house with the remote-controlled indoor swimming pool in the living room was a bit over the top.)

I will confess that I did not guess the direction the plot would take, but what was so disappointing was the profusion of loose ends and entirely pointless characters. Agatha didn't usually write them that way - everyone ended up with a role in the outcome of the story. Here we are presented with in-laws, neighbors, family friends, and a mysterious old woman --- all of whom have nothing at all to do with the resolution of the story. Most of them could have been omitted entirely and the story would have been essentially unchanged.

My DVD even featured an editing error: about 10 seconds of the film repeat precisely (when the girl's parents are observed getting back into their car to leave.)

There is also a broken window that is never explained, a ghostly appearance that is never accounted for or revisited, a car is observed to take an unusually long to get somewhere - but we are never given the significance. An architect seems to know things the audience does not -- yet no explanation is offered of how he knows them.

Like Agatha's best writing, characters and clues and complications pile up... but then they are inexplicably thrown away in favor of an unexpected, yet rather anticlimactic resolution.