Watch Night People For Free

Too much of everything

This is How Movies Should Be Made

So much average

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

This film is so well crafted that it still can't be faulted - 60 years later. There's not a weak player in the cast - and this must be the film to remember both Peck and Crawford by. Peck by his mastery of the very complex character he has to play, Crawford by the masterful way in which he plays his usual, boorish, stereotype - but then brilliantly wises up to reality. The scenes where Peck and Crawford interact are electric.The plot is very, very complex. Even if you pay full attention to every word and every character nuance, you'll probably still be unprepared for the twists and turns of Nunnally Johnson's subtle and complex story.On this topic, you'll note some reviews criticising the plot for weaknesses. Not So. It is a foolhardy reviewer who goes up against a Nunnally Johnson script! To elaborate I'd have to spoil. Suffice it to say that this story is a wild horse - and you'll have one heck of a job staying on its back as it bucks, twists and cavorts.Worth seeing - has to be seen, some might say - more than once!

A film that starts out innocently enough and is shot in Technicolor doesn't hold out much hope of being much of a tough Berlin Cold War drama like Carol Reed and James Mason might have made. Nonetheless, Night People gets pretty engrossing as the story unfolds. What it lacks in shadowy black and white photography and bleak ambiance, it makes up for in a couple of cool plot twists and attention to keeping the story moving. Gregory Peck bites off his lines as if he really means them as the colonel who's trying to get the young corporal who was kidnapped from the US sector after he kisses his German girlfriend good night, to the Russian sector and held for the ransom of an elderly couple, the wife of whom is part of a cool scene in a big beerhall restaurant where Peck is chewing the scenery and German sausages with Broderick Crawford. Crawford's character as a rich Toledo industrialist and well connected father of the kidnapped corporal gets pretty interesting as well as he's bent on throwing as much of his considerable weight around as he can in order to expedite his son's return. But this is international intrigue which requires a lot of preparation while the go-between German ex-mistress of Peck who likes absinthe, gets slowly revealed. Actually, the story is mostly top-notch, though with sergeant Buddy Ebsen's numerous humorous observations and overall casualness, the film is a lot lighter though not necessarily less smarter than some the of black and white classics.

It seems that someone pulled the plug on 1954's "Night People." There is a very good plot here about a young American soldier being kidnapped by the Communists in post-World War 11 East Germany. Broderick Crawford, in his usual tough no nonsense portrayals, comes to Berlin to make sure that no one is goofing off on getting his son free as well as to show that his a lot of political ties.What I found interesting here is that the usual gang buster Crawford quiets down and even changes his opinion once he finds out the elements of the entire story. Seems that the East Germans want to exchange his son for an elderly couple, the wife was British and the husband was a German army official, blinded by the Nazis. Appears that the British wife was informing allied intelligence of Nazi activities during the war.Peck is in his usual fine form as someone seeking justice and finding out along the way that his German female assistant is not everything she was cracked up to be.The film needs to have excitement with such a plot but we don't get it at all. Even the drinking of the poison is not shown with any zest at all.

This is an extremely well done motion picture. The first directorial job of longtime writer Nunnally Johnson revealed a fine talent which created suspense and captures the audience minds without resorting to chases and explosions. Everything happens indoors, and it is question of brains not of fists.A magnificent job by Broderick Crawford and Gregory Peck, and a well done investigation into cold war minds, all about the kidnapping by the Russians of an U.S.Corporal in Berlin, in order to exchange him for a couple of elderly Germans wanted supposedly by former Nazis in the service of the Soviets. Everything works wonderfully, until one asks why didn't the Russians kidnap the couple in the first place and save all the trouble.Curiously, this was nominated to an Oscar for best original story... It lost, and the award went to Philip Yordan for Broken Lance, which was based not on an original story but in the screenplay Yordan had written in 1949 for House of Strangers, from a story by Jerome Weidman.