All Through the Night

Vincent Sherman: All Through the Night (US 1942) avec Peter Lorre, Karen Verne, Humphrey Bogart.

Échec à la Gestapo / Kuoleman lasti / Sweden: Kalabalik i högkvarteret / Sweden 2: Gangsterrazzia.
Vincent Sherman / États-Unis / 1942 / 107 min / 16 mm / VOSTF
d'après une histoire de Leonard Q. Ross, Leonard Spigelgass
Avec Humphrey Bogart, Conrad Veidt, Karen Verne.
U.S. premiere: 10 Jan 1942.
Finnish premiere: 22 July 1949.
French premiere: 14 Dec 1949, Paris premiere: 14 Dec 1949.
La Cinémathèque française : Rétrospective Warner Bros., fabrique de stars - Rétrospective Le cinéma d'espionnage (3e partie)
Greek subtitles on the 16 mm print and e-subtitles in French by Scéna Media.
Viewed at Salle Georges Franju, Paris, Jeudi 13 avril 2023, 14h45 16h35
La Cinémathèque française : "Pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale, Gloves Donahue, un joueur professionnel, lève le voile sur un réseau d'activistes nazis établi en plein cœur de New York."

AA: All Through the Night had its premiere in January 1942, and the principal production of Casablanca started in May 1942. All Through the Night is a Casablanca predecessor, bringing together Humphrey Bogart, Conrad Veidt and Peter Lorre in an anti-Nazi drama.

The best of the Casablanca spinoffs was Howard Hawks's To Have and Have Not, and Vincent Sherman's divertissement is far from that level, yet it is a great pleasure to meet Humphrey Bogart at his relaxed best as an action hero defeating the Nazis on their way to world domination in the heart of New York.

As we know from Ken Burns's U.S. and the Holocaust (2022), Nazism was no laughing matter in the 1930s and the 1940s in the U.S.A.

The great exiles from Hitler's Germany, Peter Lorre and Conrad Veidt, play key Nazi parts. The entire cast is wonderful with many of Hollywood's best character actors.

The enchanting leading lady is Karen Verne, another exile from Germany. Like Lauren Bacall in To Have and To Have Not, she gets to sing torch songs, including the theme song. The title of the movie does not refer to the spiritual "This Little Light Of Mine".

Leda Hamilton (Karen Verne) and the baker Herman Miller (Ludwig Stössel) have relatives in Germany in concentration camps, and that's how the Nazis are able to blackmail them to work for them.

The 16 mm print is not hot, but the screening offered a great evening of entertainment. And concern, because the threat of authoritarianism is not over, not even in the U.S.A.