Night Has a Thousand Eyes (1948)

This decidedly creepy screen adaptation of Cornell Woolrich's novel of the same name is offbeat and gripping right from the start. Its story of a man who's troubled by his ability to foresee the future, becomes increasingly distressing as his unwanted talent gradually destroys his life and fills him with guilt about the tragedies that he sees in his "visions". Sadly, because his visions can't be controlled and no-one can change the hand of fate, there seems to be no way out of this man's personal Hell.Suicidal heiress Jean Courtland (Gail Russell) is standing on a bridge, poised to leap in front of an on-coming train, when her fiancé Elliott Carson (John Lund) suddenly appears and prevents her from jumping. When the young couple retreat to a nearby café and meet up with the man who'd saved Jean's life by alerting Elliott to the danger that she was in, their conversation proves to be very enlightening.John Triton (Edward G Robinson) explains that twenty years earlier, he and Jean's parents, Whitney (Jerome Cowan) and Jenny (Virginia Bruce), had been partners in a touring vaudeville act in which he was a phoney mind-reader, his best friend Whitney played the piano and his fiancée Jenny was the glamorous assistant. During this period, John started to have visions that proved to be accurate predictions of future events and Whitney capitalised on this by using John's tips to prosper through gambling and playing the stock market. One night when they were all on stage together, John became terribly upset and had to bring the performance to a sudden end when he had a vision of Jenny, after their marriage, dying in childbirth. In order to prevent this premonition from becoming a reality and without telling his partners what he'd "seen", he decided to leave the act and simply disappear (but not before giving Whitney some advice about making an investment in an oil business).John became a recluse and after some time had passed with no word from him, Whitney and Jenny married but Jenny subsequently died in childbirth. John went on to live a very quiet and lonely life in the Bunker Hill district of L.A. until a short time before Jean's suicide attempt, when he contacted her because he'd had a vision of Whitney dying in a plane crash. Jean's efforts to contact her father proved unsuccessful and as predicted, he perished in the wreckage of his plane.Elliott is very sceptical and thinks that John's a charlatan working on some sort of scam to get his hands on Jean's money but Jean trusts him implicitly. This is because she remembers how fondly her father had spoken of his best friend and his impressive psychic powers. John then becomes distraught after having a vision in which he foresees Jean's death and despite the apparent futility of the idea, becomes absolutely determined to prevent her demise.This moody thriller has a strange mesmeric quality and a level of tension that grows steadily with each new development. Its ominous atmosphere is beautifully complemented by Victor Young's effective score and John F Seitz's top class cinematography, but it's the knockout performance by Edward G Robinson that provides the real icing on the cake. His tragic character sums up his predicament at one point when he says that "this gift which I never asked for and don't understand has brought me only unhappiness". Having lost the love of his life and his best friend because of his gift and being condemned to a life of isolation and loneliness , he then gets openly disrespected by most people who think he's a fraud or a criminal and knows that all he faces in the future is the unending torment that he'll inevitably experience until his own demise.What Robinson captures so brilliantly is John Triton's innate decency as well as the melancholia that has understandably engulfed him as a result of his experiences. The supporting cast is also consistently good with Gail Russell standing out as a great choice for her role because her appearance and deportment make her privileged but troubled character so convincing.

Night Has a Thousand Eyes is directed by John Farrow and adapted to screenplay by Barre Lyndon and Jonathan Latimer from the novel of the same name written by Cornell Woolrich. It stars Edward G. Robinson, Gail Russell, John Lund, Virginia Bruce, William Demarest, Richard Webb and Jerome Cowan. Music is scored by Victor Young and cinematography by John F. Seitz.John Triton (Robinson) is a nightclub fortune teller who suddenly finds he really does posses psychic ability. As his predictions become more bleaker, Triton struggles with what was once a gift but now is very much a curse.During a visually sumptuous beginning to the film, a girl is saved from suicide, it's an attention grabbing start and sets the tone for what will follow. Mood and strangulated atmosphere born out by photographic styles, craft of acting and Young's spine tingling score are the keys to the film's success, with the pervading sense of doom ensuring the narrative never falls into mawkish hell. It's a film that shares thematic similarities with a 1934 Claude Rains picture titled The Clairvoyant, only here we enter noir territory for Triton's cursed journey, where as the Rains movie was ultimately leading us to the savage idiocy of mob justice.Farrow's (The Big Clock/Where Danger Lives) film falls into a small quasi supernatural group of black and whites that are formed around a carnival/psychic act. It's a situation for film that film noir makers sadly didn't explore more often, making the likes of Night Has a Thousand Eyes, Nightmare Alley and The Spiritualist little treasures to be cherished. Farrow gets as much suspense out of the story as he can, of which he is helped enormously by the great work of Robinson. At a time when the HUAC was breathing down his neck, Robinson turns in a definitive portrayal of a man caught in a trap, his fate sealed. His face haunted and haggard, his spoken words sorrowful and hushed, Robinson is simply terrific.The world of prognostication gets a film noir make-over, death under the stars indeed. 8/10

I've seen this film only once & loved it! It shows just how versitile of an actor Robinson really was.It tells the story of a man who discovers he really has the ability to see into the future. He becomes a recluse out of the fear that his predictions always come true. That same fear brings him out of reclusion when he seeks out the daughter of a woman he once loved to warn her of impending danger. The only thing I dislike about this film? It never made it to video. For anyone that would like to see this film's plot, I recommend "The Clarivoyant" with Claude Rains.

I saw this movie as a 16 year old, and have only seen it once since, but I found it to be a spooky and suspenseful tale. Edward G. Robinson does his usual superb job of acting, and I liked Gail Russell in it very much.