Destin dans la nuit

A businessman's wife, without his knowledge, helps send him to prison to prevent him from being murdered by rivals. The plan backfires when he is sentenced to a ten year stretch.

Solid performance by George Raft as the husband and a typical tough girl performance by Joan Bennett as his wife. Some scenes were directed by Alfred Hitchcock but sadly the script, whilst containing some good dialogue, prevents this from being so much better.

While Warner Brothers had nothing for George Raft to do they lent him in 1940 to Walter Wanger for an independent production that Wanger released through United Artists, The House Across The Bay. The bay is San Francisco Bay and the house is an apartment that Joan Bennett takes on Telegraph Hill that faces Alcatraz where Raft is incarcerated for what Al Capone was also there for, income tax evasion. Bennett still wants to feel somewhat connected to her man out on the island in the bay.

Right around this time Raft made the first of several career blunders in turning down some pretty good films, in this case it was High Sierra which certainly gave Humphrey Bogart a boost. So instead of doing High Sierra, Raft wound up in this rather unbelievable film.

For a guy who was supposed to be a smart gangster George Raft is one incredible fool in this one. He meets and marries Joan Bennett who was an entertainer at one of his clubs. When Raft gets shot at by some business competitors, he allows himself to take some lawyerly and wifely advice from Bennett and his lawyer Lloyd Nolan. Of course Nolan has an agenda all his own which not only includes taking Bennett from Raft, but also his money. Nolan tanks the defense and Raft winds up with ten years on the Rock for income tax evasion. I'm sure he and Al Capone must have commiserated some while there.

Bennett is loyal and true blue, but she's feeling a bit antsy and also attracted to aircraft manufacturer Walter Pidgeon whom she meets by accident. After that the plot takes some unbelievable turns.

Joan Bennett and her husband Walter Wanger were friends of George Raft, The House Across The Bay in fact was the third of four films she did with him. She also wrote the forward to George Raft's biography, The George Raft File. She described Raft as moody and temperamental and trying to break away from his gangster persona. This sure wasn't the film to do it. But that he was also a polished gentleman and proud of the fact he'd raised himself to stardom after a childhood in Hell's Kitchen in New York. She also said he was a marvelous dancer and that when Wanger and she were out on the town and met Raft at some nightclub, he would always ask Wanger for a dance with his wife. A good idea since Wanger later shot someone paying attention to Joan Bennett.

According to Bennett, Raft did walk off the film, but later did come back only to find that director Archie Mayo also walked off it just before shooting the finale. Alfred Hitchcock came in and shot the last scene with no credit as a favor.

Bennett and Raft and in fact all the cast have seen better days. They look bored with the film and Pidgeon loaned out from MGM as Raft was from Warner Brothers has little to do, but be a noble pal to Bennett. Lloyd Nolan always is good even in the worst films and Gladys George as the unofficial chairperson of a fraternity of visiting Alcatraz women is outstanding in the film. She's another one who always is.

Raft turned down High Sierra, The Maltese Falcon, and Casablanca all at Warner Brothers and instead wound up doing this. Well at least Humphrey Bogart made out fine in the deal.

A George Raft movie I never saw? Impossible, but true. And I don't think many others have seen it either. The plot isn't much, but the movie does have a certain charm. George Raft elevated under acting to a fine art, but in this movie, he almost seems animated. I could tell because he raised his voice a half decibel, and he smiled.

He plays a hard boiled gangster who falls for his lucky charm played by Joan Bennett. He is so fixed on her he is blind to all the enemies around him. Joan sells him out to the IRS to keep him from being snuffed, and the Feds tuck him away in Alcatraz for ten years. But as we know, these things never work out. Don't pay too much attention to the plot. It's routine and predictable. Instead, watch the acting. None of the principals seem to deliver the performance you might expect. George Raft gets emotional and, at times, even seems a little vulnerable. Joan Bennett, who can be very seductive, seems schizophrenic and switches from light comedy to pure drama without warning. Walter Pigeon plays Walter Pigeon, but with less intensity and no mustache. I should give honorable mention to Lloyd Nolan in a supporting role as a rat. I always give Lloyd Nolan honorable mention. An amusing coincidence here. The movie takes place in San Francisco, which was Lloyd Nolan's home town. Also, Walter Pigeon's character is named Nolan, and it was curious to watch Lloyd Nolan talking to Mr Nolan. I kept watching his face to see if I could detect a wink or a nod of recognition, but he is too good an actor and never so much as blinked.

This may be a routine pot boiler, but some of the performances are worth watching, so tune in. I don't think you'll be disappointed.

The flick's a Bennett showcase. The other top-cast members (Raft, Pidgeon, Nolan) sort of drop in and out as needed, while Bennett's struggling single woman carries the storyline. Despite Raft's presence as an underworld entrepreneur, the plot has more to do with Bennett's romantic mishaps than with the sinister Raft. So what suspense there is has mostly to do with which suitor she'll end up with rather than Raft's underworld intrigue. Nonetheless, note that clever plot twist where, for his own protection, Bennett gets Raft sent to the slammer for what she thinks is only a year, only to watch it backfire in more ways than one. It's also an ironical move that sets up the rather surprising climax.

Anyway, kudos to wonderful A-list actress Bennett who's both gorgeous and convincing in what's a fairly demanding role. Her steely reserve alternates convincingly with the more tender moments. Also, a big nod to the always understated Lloyd Nolan as the sly lawyer man, along with Raft who manages to unbend more than usual, his occasional hard-eyed stare still managing to send me under the bed. To me, the movie's high point, however, are the scenes between the sassy Gladys George and Bennett who still manages to hold her own against tough gal competition. Between them, there's a lot of memorable chemistry and snappy dialogue.

All in all, it's more a movie of outstanding cast-members than gripping plot. Nonetheless, the 90-minutes will keep the viewer eye tuned in.

The House Across the Bay (1940)

By 1940 the gangster film, and the related prison film, have been pretty well explored, and here the clichés are on display. It's all done well, with good acting, but there is a sense of dull familiarity to it. I can only imagine, as WWI is breaking out in Europe, how much this movie might have looked worn and dull. In fact, it lost a lot of money for Warner Bros. and didn't do leading man George Raft any favors professionally.

Just as Humphrey Bogart was coming into his great fame in the early 1940s, Raft was falling from a routine stardom in the 1930s into a kind of lesser echo career of Bogart's for the 1940s. Because Raft never was and never will be Bogart, there's something missing to this gangster drama that is partly due to Raft's lack of screen presence.

This isn't actually a Warner Bros. production even though Raft was on contract to them. This is produced by independent producer Walter Wanger (who had just done "Stagecoach" in 1939 and was about to produce "The Long Voyage Home"). And in a way this film marks the end of Raft's fame as a leading leading man. The other leads include Joan Bennett, not a great crime female but a good actress and she holds her own. A third lead is the ever-likable and easy going Lloyd Nolan, who plays friend and lawyer to Raft and to Bennett once Raft gets in trouble.

The only copy I know of for this movie is a weak one (on Netflix) probably made for television release, and the filming and mood of the movie are really excellent. You just can't quite appreciate it here, and unfortunately, this mood is partly what makes the movie click. There are some great archetypes to check off, including good old Alcatraz, though some of the setwork for these scenes is cheap looking. "The food in Leavenworth is much better," says one wife on the boat back to San Francisco.

This is an unexpected turning point of the movie, and weirdly enough, it's the real substance of it. Because, in fact, the house across the bay is the place on Telegraph Hill that Bennett has rented to look out over the bay to the prison. A second kind of plot grows up exactly halfway through as Bennett waits out Raft's prison term. Walter Pidgeon joins Bennett and also Gladys George (another inmate wife) in what is a more mainstream kind of drama and I liked this part of the film a lot. It's fun and has lots of minor little twists and a bit of a love story.

Expect nothing deep or superb here. A little bit of the WWII aspects are probably patched on last minute (some chitchat about gun mounts), but it does give this part of the movie some edge over the George Raft part. In the air sequence you'll see one of the first aerial views of the Golden Gate Bridge in Hollywood (the bridge was finished in 1937).

The final scenes of the movie are dramatic and not a bit believable, but it's just part of the drama and go for it. A whole mixture of things go slightly wrong throughout, keeping this from being the big drama it was trying to be. But there are lots of good aspects, too, especially for lovers of this era. Just hope they come up with a better transfer by the time you see it.