User reviews

Debate and confusion will always exist about when film noir starts and finishes, or if it should only appertain to one country. Importantly it will always be in the eye of the beholder, more so since many of the film makers back in the day didn't know they were making films that would soon become a film making style phenomenon.

On the Night of the Fire (AKA: The Fugitive) has everything a film noir lover could want. Directed by Brian Desmond Hurst and adapted from F.L. Green's novel of the same name, film stars Ralph Richardson, Diana Wynyard, Romney Brent, Mary Clare and Henry Oscar. Plot has Richardson as Will Kobling, a Tyneside barber in the North East of England, who after spying an open window at the local mill, lets temptation get the better of him and climbs in to steal the money that will hopefully end his family's financial woes. On such impulsive decisions does life alter...

From the off the pic is exuding a period of working class Britain from days of yore! It's all brickwork and cobbled streets, of musky docks, gin houses, beat street coppers and sweat stained barber shops where graft and honest toil is the order of the day. Magnificently hovering over proceedings is a swirling score by Miklós Rózsa (Double Indemnity/Criss Cross) and Germanic cinematography by Günther Krampf (Pandora's Box/The Ghoul), with these in full effect and director Hurst firmly dealing in a mood of pessimism, this really becomes a picture not complying with any sort of code ethics.

The characterisations are superbly dubious, story is awash with folk who are quick to turn on a sixpence to meet their ends. There's hysterical alcoholics, shifty loners, a business man who is not beyond expecting sexual favours to pay off a debt. Added into the pot is murder, blackmail and the corruption of someone we could quite easily sympathise with, all this and the fire that smoothers the town in smog, water and floating burnt cinders. The backdrop is set in noirish stone, Richardson is superb, and then the devilish hand of noir fate steps in to not cheat lovers of the film making medium.

A bit stagy at times and the likes of Mary Clare are too hysterical with their acting - where the director should have reined it in - but small complaints for anyone interested in British Proto-Noir before it even had a name. 8/10

I happened to catch this one on late night TV and was unable to switch it off and go to bed. The central character reminded me of Raskolnikov from Dostoevsky's 'Crime and Punishment' - how after committing the crime, his own guilt was more effective in punishing him than the efforts of the law.

While the acting tended to be very theatrical as was typical for the period, the camera work, sets and general appearance were above average and the plotting was tight and tension well maintained thoughout the film.

I gave it an 8.

Will Kobling, a hard working barber, succumbs to a temptation that so many of us might given the right circumstances and sets in motion a devastating train of events. Brian Desmond-Hurst was not a great director but a very capable one and keeps the momentum going. The fickleness of the mob and the way in which gossip spreads like wildfire are very well depicted. This would be a far lesser film however and would not be nearly as effective were it not for the presence of Ralph Richardson as Kobling and Diana Wynyard as his adoring wife. They are both magnificent. Excellent cinematography by Gunther Krampf but the score by Miklos Rozsa is far too biblical. Judging by the preponderance of Cockneys one finds it hard to believe it is set on Tyneside!

Ralph Richardson stars with Dana Wynyard in this 1939 film, "On the Night of the Fire."

Richardson plays a barber, Will Kobling, who walks by an open window, sees some money on a desk and steals it.

His wife, in an attempt to keep up with her wealthy sister, winds up owing money to a local merchant. He is somewhat of a loan shark, but when Kit pays him with stolen money, the police become suspicious due to numbers on the bills.

This leads to a great deal of tragedy, with Kobling wanted for murder and ultimately going into hiding.

Ralph Richardson was such a magnificent actor that a good deal of this film is done in silence. It is enormously effective. On the set of The Heiress, Montgomery Clift complained that Richardson never made a mistake.

Despite all his transgressions, we are sympathetic toward Kobling and his wife, Wynyard giving a beautiful performance.

Definitely worth seeing especially for the performances.

I am not a specialist of British films from the thirties and forties, but this one, which I discovered at the French Cinémathèque in 1988, amazed me so much. It is a drama, truly tragic thriller drama starring a terrific Ralph Richardson, grabs you, holds you from the beginning till the end. I have always thought that Ralph Richardson had the same face as Michel Serrault, the French actor, who would also had been excellent in this kind of character. The scheme looks like a James Hadley Chase's novel with a lead desperate character who looks like you and me, and who slowly but surely becomes a murderer, because of his mone issues and a blackmailer. A greedy blackmailer. The tooic where audiences can't prevent to become full of empathy for the mai character, no matter what he does to survive. Outstanding British crime flick. By the way, speaking of British masterpieces fromt he forties, what a gem THE WICKED LADY, the Leslie Arliss's film, starring Margaret Lockwood in a kind of Gene Tierney in LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN.

In 1930s Newcastle, if you worked in a bank, you could leave money unattended in an empty room and leave the window open. This was especially a good thing to do in a poor working-class area near the docks. We seem to have developed our ideas since then. Anyway, for this film, barber Ralph Richardson (Will) comes across this scenario and decides to go for it and pinch the money just sitting there inviting his attention. Well, he is now £100.00 richer. Nice one.

However, what is he going to do with his new wealth? Oh no, his wife Diana Wynyard (Kit) has got herself into debt by owing the local tailor Henry Oscar (Pillinger) for outfits so she can keep up appearances. She is being pressured for payment of debts and this is where the bulk of Richardson's wealth is absorbed. Typical - just when he was planning a happy life for his family, a woman has ruined it!

Thanks to a money laundering trail, the police put a watch on Oscar's movements which leads to bribery and murder.

The film is a character study of how things can go terribly wrong so easily for what is essentially a good man - Ralph Richardson. This is about his descent. The film has a good setting and story although it does occasionally drag in the 2nd half. It also contains a terribly over-the-top performance of a screaming woman that looks like Miriam Margolyes. Definitely a relative. We also get a young barber's apprentice who features quite prominently in the story and doesn't even get a mention in the credits. How unfair is that! He also has a strong cockney accent and taken with the other accents in the film, you would assume that this is set in London. Nope. It's Newcastle. Obviously before the Geordie accent was invented for the purposes of Reality TV shows.

This film is brilliantly directed by the largely forgotten Irish director, Brian Desmond Hurst, and brilliantly performed by its entire cast. But it is largely a 'downer', with its plot of the unremitting grinding of the wheels of Fate. It was filmed in 1939 and released in the spring of 1940. With entry into war, the British public no longer wanted tragedies but 'feel-good films', and they must have tried to forget this film, which was too much like reality to be comfortable. This film is really more like the post-War 'noir' films of America, where doom awaits. It must have been the last of the gritty 1930s British film dramas before the ultimate grit of the Blitz hit in 1940. The film is fascinating in many respects. It shows in intimate detail the life of a working-class urban community in Britain, in those last pre-War moments before most such communities were wiped out forever by German bombs. There are many wonderful location shots of the docks and streets of such areas, later reduced to rubble. For much of the film, I struggled to figure out which part of old London near the docks this could be, and thought I recognised a street near the wharves of old Lambeth (near the reconstructed Globe Theatre) which was only finally demolished about 20 years ago. But towards the end of the film, we are shown a shot of the unmistakable railway bridge hurting northwards across the river into Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and I realized this film must have been meant to take place at Newcastle. But no one in the film has 'Geordie' accents (the unmistakable accent of Newcastle folk). They all speak like Londoners except for Sara Allgood, who does her best to suppress her Irish lilt (she was a famous actress from the old Abbey Theatre in Dublin whom Hurst had directed in his earlier films 'Irish Hearts' of 1934 and 'Riders to the Sea' of 1935.) The young Glynis Johns, aged 17 and already in her fifth film, appears as a fey maid in this film. But the central performances are those of Ralph Richardson and Diana Wynyard, as a couple faced with a terrible dilemma. Wynyard is often of the verge of screaming hysteria in this desperate tale, but her stiff upper lip triumphs. Richardson was perfect for these parts as an introspective and worried husband, and was what you might call 'a steady presence on screen'. His great ability was to stand with the camera on his face and suddenly, as we watch, achieve 'realization' of something, with a nervous narrowing and slight twitching of his eyes. Henry Oscar is marvellously creepy as a miser who sits counting his money alone in his shop at hight, while listening to records of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos. (The director makes good use of this, and a special shot featuring the gramophone, which is very effective, was later much copied by other directors.) This is an almost unbearably intense tragedy, thoroughly convincing, but it won't cheer you up, so be strong.

If the only movie he had directed had been 1951's 'A Christmas Carol', Brian Desmond Hurst would have been a great director. Imagine my happiness to watch this movie and discover another great movie from the man.

Ralph Richardson is a barber in a poor street in an unnamed port city; wife Diana Wynard has just given birth to a daughter and money is tight. One evening, Richardson is walking through the street. He passes by a bank and spots a pile of cash. He hops through the window, grabs it, hops back out and goes home -- to a life that involves blackmail, murder, riot and suicide.

It's about two whiskers from straight film noir. Small man seeking a place in a decent society? Check. German Expressionist cinematographer? Check (it's Gunther Krampf, whose work on NOSFERATU was uncredited). Echoes of French Poetic Realism and doom? Check. It misses on a couple of points, like the presence of actual criminal masterminds, but it delivers on almost everything else.

Ralph Richardson is superb -- as he is in every role I've seen him in. For those who like to play spot-the-star, Glynis Johns has a role with two lines in her second year in the movies; she does has a credit at the bottom of the cast list.

I read all the user reviews first and disagreed with all their comments except with that of "writers_reign".This film is a "lot of old tosh".I have seen many Ralph Richardson (RR) movies and have generally liked most of his performances.The fault lies with the film producers hence I only awarded this film 2/10.I am now 67 and have seen many films from this period.The main faults of this film in my opinion are:

1.No evidence of a genuine working class vernacular "Geordie" accent for a drama set in Newcastle was noticeable from any of the actors.Thus it did not reflect enough of the local atmosphere in the North-East of England.As "writers_reign states, even the female lead, (Diana Wyngard), had a posh cut glass accent!.

2.As this is yet another claustrophobic studio bound production, the impression was more of a small village where everyone knows everyone else rather than a big city like Newcastle with a much more diverse ethnic mix to the population.The producers get up to a few tricks like actual newsreels of fires and stock footage of Newcastle but it did not convince or work, then we are back to dark moody studio interiors once again.

3.I get tired of the inevitable moral twist by the British Board of Film Censors at the time who decreed that every criminal must get his just deserts or surrender to justice.The anti-hero played by RR had a lot of my sympathy and it was a very tame ending to the film but that was the moral compass at the time.

4.A bunch of old harridans spread rumours about RR with which everyone and his dog agrees even forming a vigilante gang to attack his barber shop.What happened to the principle "everyone is innocent until legally proved guilty and why are people so ready to believe only rumours of guilt?

A very tame film by the producers.

Brian Desmond Hurst may have lived to 91 but he did not direct that many films - only 29. That said, THE FUGITIVE (aka On the night of the fire) remains one of his best and darkest efforts, rightfully ranking as one of Great Britain's earliest films noir.

Born in Northern Ireland, Hurst had the British authorities in 1936 prohibit his film OURSELVES ALONE from being shown because of its anti-British stance. The British government then banned his adaptation of Edgar Poe's TELL TALE HEART because it was "too horrible." So THE FUGITIVE attracted considerable attention from the British powers that be upon release... but got the approval certificate, despite being a tragedy of near Shakespearean dimensions.

Thankfully, Sir Ralph Richardson had a sound knowledge of, and flair for playing Shakespeare, so he delivers a performance that ranges from deadpan to love conveying eyes to a smile upon the death that releases him from a life robbed of happiness by his very surrender to the tempation of stealing.

Sir Ralph is ably seconded by Diana Wynyard as his devoted wife who, too, falls prey to the temptation of living beyond her means, prompting debts that she has to pay on pain of blackmail from the sinister figure of usurer Pilleger (brilliant show from Henry Oscar), a legally-backed businessman with a taste for classic music.

The law that Kobling (Sir Ralph) so wishes to avoid on the one hand, he takes into his other hand by taking Pilleger's life in an intelligently shot sequence to the tune of Pachelbel's Canon.

Superior cinematography from Gunther Krampf, born in the former Austro-Hungarian empire and with a background in German expressionism in films. The scenes with Henry Oscar and his gramophone are memorable.

The night of the fire of the original British title refers to a city fire that provides Kobling with an alibi, but deceit is something neither he nor his beloved wife can live with. Certainly no happy ending... but a honest one. 8/10.

This may have been a decent drama in the 1930's, but it's not up to todays standards - the acting, the script, the photography is just not good enough. Skip it

You recognise the moods, the characters, the situations, the environment, the hopelessness and the profound pathos of love from "Odd Man Out" eight years later by the same author, who apparently was obsessed with the theme of the outsider being hunted to death but always nevertheless finding a way out. Here the love story is more mature, they are married and deeply in love with each other and have a baby, when Ralph Richardson is subject to an irresistible temptation as he passes by a window and sees a lot of money lying on the table. That's the first crime, starting the vicious circle of consecutive crimes resulting from the first one, going inevitably from bad to worse. You can understand them, he is.a barber and they live in small circumstances in humdrum squalid quarters, and she feels guilty for his crime since she by her extravagant expenses have put them in debt - to a blackmailer. So they have no choice but to protect each other as far as possible, and naturally there are other circumstances sabotaging their efforts, like a city fire and a dreadful car accident. It's sad story but brilliantly acted by Ralph Richardson and Diana Wynyard, always a supreme beauty, accompanied by a great score by Miklos Rosza; but the best scenes are the mass scenes, mainly at the pub centering around the balmy Lizzie, an old tramp who is a regular customer with the police. It's a great prelude to "Odd Man Out", and it's interesting to compare them, both for their differences and their common assets.

A film well worth watching similar in some ways to Odd Man Out about a man on the run and the working class life of a British city but without Carol Reed's cinematic flair. The acting was impressive, especially by Sir Ralph ,Diana Wynyard and Henry Oscar. And by the way the film was made for 1939 audiences not those in 2020.

A relentlessly harrowing drama that anticipates Sidney Lumet's 'Before the Devil Knows You're Dead' (2007) by nearly seventy years.

I once saw a silent film that I correctly guessed was going to turn out to be a bad dream since the hero's plight had escalated so far out of control that was the only way it could possibly be resolved; and resorting to making it All a Dream has ruined quite a few fine films in its time (as well as coming as a great relief when I've woken up a few times)!

'On the Night of the Fire' is such a film. As Ralph Richardson's situation grew more and more desperate in this Tyneside (not that you'd know it from the accents) 'Crime and Punishment' the more convinced I became that it was all going to end with him waking up to discover that it had all just been a nightmare.

Or was it?