Wait Until Dark, a review by Jon
Wait Until Dark
4 out of 5
Audrey Hepburn plays Susy, a blind woman whose husband is passed a doll at an airport. He’s away on business and three criminals come looking for the doll, manipulating Susy into telling them where it is.
This is a cracking thriller that’s going right near the top of my Best Films I Never Heard Of list. It doesn’t deserve to be on such a list, mind. I discovered it by accident while browsing HMVs sale and I encourage everyone else to try and have the same accident. Why it isn’t talked about more, I can’t say.
The setup is deliciously simple, as all such thrillers should be. Blind woman, trapped in an apartment while thugs tease her into revealing the location of a doll. Terence Young, director of several early Bond films, must have relished such an idea. It’s one of those wonderful plots that must be like building a domino display; put all the work in early then flick one and watch it all unfold.
Apart from the start and a couple of brief outdoor shots, all the action is based in the apartment. Even the first meeting between the three criminals takes place there while Suzy is out. She returns briefly and they try to hide, but quickly realise of course, she’s blind. It’s a fantastic scene as she moves around the apartment and has no idea the three men are there!
Audrey Hepburn is fantastic as Suzy, who has been blind for about a year and is still struggling to be fully independent. Sam gives her a lot of tough love to help her do so. She has a couple of hysterical moments and she’s great showing how her character realises she’s got to help herself and stay strong. The three thugs (Richard Crenna, Jack Weston and Alan Arkin) are all good too, especially the psychotic Arkin, a master of disguise.
The middle part of the film is concerned with setting up the rather complicated hustle. Crenna pretends to be an old wartime buddy of Suzy’s husband, Sam; Weston is a detective and Arkin a man building a story around the doll that suggests Sam was having an affair with a recent murder victim. This section isn’t particularly tense, though knowing she’s on her own and unaware of the danger she is in is certainly unsettling. It’s very satisfying though to see her prove she’s not as daft as they think and it setups all the little bits and pieces that will come into play, like potential weapons and noisy items that give away locations. It’s fun spotting things like that.
It really works its magic in the final act as Terence Young pushes that first domino! As all the pieces come together and she’s worked out the plot, she tries to fight back. Her trick is to smash every light, therefore making them as blind as she is. At times in this sequence there is no light at all and it is pant-wettingly nerve wracking while you stare at a pitch black screen!
I can’t recommend this enough. It’s old fashioned, but would fit in well with the Fox Film Noir series, except it isn’t by Fox and it isn’t film noir, though that never stopped Fox.
) It’s a setup that works so well in cinema, something I could imagine Hitchcock using, I’m surprised it hasn’t been remade. The only modern equivalent I can think of is Panic Room (there’s even a kid in this one who helps, but isn’t trapped with her). However, Wait Until Dark is far superior.
The only thing that spoilt it for me was wondering where the heck I’d seen Jack Weston before. So it doesn’t spoil it for you, he was Oscar, who would “not get away” in Short Circuit 2!
(From October Marathon: Horror! on October 27th, 2008)
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May 18, 2024, 08:09:57 PM
