The Big Night
With John Barrymore, Jr., Preston Foster, Joan Lorring.
US, 1953, 35mm, black & white, 75 min.
Print source: George Eastman Museum
The unsung gem, and also the very last film, of Joseph Losey’s Hollywood period, The Big Night is a surprisingly frank and dark coming-of-age story starring a memorable John Barrymore, Jr. as a would-be Hamlet determined to avenge a vicious injury mysteriously delivered to his father by a sadistic sports writer. Wandering furiously through the mean streets of a Los Angeles loosely posed as Manhattan, Barrymore’s awkward hero encounters a series of vivid underworld characters, including Assistant Director Robert Aldrich, appearing in a memorable cameo as a generous spectator at a boxing match, eager to share his drink with the young man. The Big Night is an outspoken expression of Red Scare Hollywood, boasting an unattributed script by blacklisted writers Hugo Butler and Ring Lardner, Jr. that bristles with open disdain for authority. Losey casts a justifiably jaundiced eye on the postwar US, which The Big Night describes as a crooked world blinded by naked avarice, racism and cutthroat self-preservation.
Part of film series
Screenings from this program
Four Star Playhouse: The Squeeze, The Witness and The Hard Way
The Southerner
