Endless Night (1972)

Endless Night is a 1972 British thriller written and directed by Sidney Gilliat and with an intriguing cast headed by Hayley Mills, Hywel Bennett and Britt Ekland.

Gilliat and Frank Launder had been an immensely successful writing, directing and producing team (they wrote The Lady Vanishes for Alfred Hitchcock).

The movie is based on a 1967 Agatha Christie thriller. Yes, this is an actual thriller. Agatha Christie did write several thrillers and Endless Night was the best of them. It was her last truly great book.

Mike Rogers is a rental car driver although that is just the latest in a series of jobs. Mike is a very nice young man but he’s a bit of a dreamer. Mike has a fantasy - to build his dream house overlooking the sea. He has already chosen the spot, known as Gypsy’s Acre. The land would cost a lot of money, the house would cost a fortune and Mike is penniless. It’s just a dream.

Doing a driving job on the Continent he meets the renowned architect Rudolf Santonix (Per Oscarsson). Santonix is only in early middle age but he is running out of time. He has severe health problems and may only have a few years left. Mike shows him photos of the site at Gypsy’s Acre. It becomes a kind of dream for Santonix as well. This is a site worthy of him. He could design a house for that site, a house that would be his final masterpiece. But since such a house would be immensely expensive and Mike has no money it’s just a dream.

And then Mike meets a cute American girl, Ellie Thomsen (Hayley Mills). They take a shine to each other. What Mike doesn’t know is that Ellie is one of the richest women in the world.

It can’t possibly work out. Penniless hire car drivers like Mike don’t marry fabulously rich heiresses. But they do get married.

That’s when the plot twists start to kick in and the atmosphere becomes increasingly foreboding, and will soon become sinister. We know something bad is going to happen but we don’t know what it will be.

There are lots of potentially sinister characters. There’s the weird old woman muttering stuff about doom. There’s Greta (Britt Ekland). She’s Ellie’s best friend and was formerly her paid companion. Everyone warns Mike about Greta. There’s Ellie’s family, and a nasty money-grubbing snobbish bunch they are. Reuben (Peter Bowles) is married to Ellie’s aunt and he’s clearly a bad ’un. There’s Ellie’s aunt Cora (Lois Maxwell) who oozes spitefulness. There’s also the family lawyer, Andrew Lippincott (George Sanders). He’s charming but he’s a lawyer and much too clever to be trustworthy.

Both Mike and Ellie are dreamers. Santonix is a dreamer. The film has a slight fairy-tale vibe (and Ellie describes herself several times as Cinderella). My feeling is that you’ll appreciate this movie more if you think of it as having a subtle fairy tale quality. Ellie is the beautiful princess. Mike is the handsome but penniless coachman who wins her heart. The house is an enchanted castle, created by the wizard Santonix. Greta is a witch (the beautiful glamorous witches are the ones you have to watch out for). She might be a good witch or a bad witch. The crazy old lady could also be a good witch or a bad witch. Reuben is the adventurer who hoped to marry the princess. Cora is the evil stepmother. Andrew Lippincott is the old king’s courtier who might want the throne himself.

I have no idea if Gilliat had any of this in mind but there is a faint whiff of unreality to this movie. A slight storybook feel. It’s a long long way from fashionable 70s gritty realism. In fact the overall feel reminds me a little of Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951) which also has that ambiguity, that sense of being not quite reality. This is a movie that has more of a 1940s or 1950s feel than an early 70s feel. Although it does have a slight affinity with Roddy McDowall’s extraordinary The Ballad of Tam Lin (1970).

While these people live in a futuristic modernist house there are constant evocations of the past such as Mike’s love of beautiful old things, and the fact that Ellie is a singer but she sings 18th century songs. There are also subtle little otherwordly hints - when we first see Ellie she looks like a fairy dancing in a field, there’s the way the old lady keeps just appearing from nowhere. These are very subtle hints but to me they reinforce the idea that reality might not be all it seems to be.

There’s also a subtle dream-like quality to this movie. Again it’s a very slight undermining of reality.

This is a deceptive movie. It’s much smarter and more complex than it initially appears to be but you don’t know how smart it is until the end. It was promoted as an ingenious whodunit, which it isn’t. The mystery plot is very simple, very straightforward and very obvious. The mystery plot is not the point of the movie but you don’t know that until the end.

Hywel Bennett is outstanding. There were certain roles that he just did better than anyone else could have done. This is one of those roles. Hayley Mills is very good although she has a less showy part. Britt Ekland is very good indeed. This movie is stacked with fine British character actors and they’re all good.

Endless Night is intriguing, stylish, enigmatic and clever. Highly recommended.

And it looks great on Blu-Ray.