Wait Until Dark, 1967
Susy (Audrey Hepburn) is a woman still coming to grips with having become recently blind. Unbeknownst to her, her husband Sam (Efrem Zimbalist Jr.) unintentionally brought home a doll filled with drugs. As the film begins, the ruthless Roat (Alan Arkin) has enlisted a conman named Mike (Richard Crenna) and an ex-police sergeant named Carlino (Jack Weston) to help him find and retrieve the doll. Isolating Susy in her apartment, with only a neighbor child named Gloria (Julie Herrod) for help, the men go to increasing lengths to get Susy to do what they want.
I haven't seen this film in ages, but after some
bullying encouragement from Rock I decided to check it out again before it left the Criterion Channel.
It is still an effectively tense and thrilling film, and the sheer sense of danger helps push past some plot and character moments that don't totally make sense.
The film takes its sweet time establishing the characters of the three criminals. This ends up being time well spent, because once they start their con they are putting on a show for Susy while pursuing their real goal, with Roat even playing several different characters. The middle third of the film is all about them trying to simply overpower Susy with the classic scammers trick of generating a sense of emergency. In the last act it all starts to fall apart, and the cards finally get put on the table.
Hepburn is good in the lead role, imbuing Susy with a sense of humor that she clearly also uses to cope with her recent drastic shift in her life. But she is also very smart, and there are many moments where we watch Susy start to pick up on inconsistencies and gaps in the stories she's being told by the three conmen. Her Susy does seem a bit too adept and quick at times for someone who is grappling with the recent loss of sight. I mean, at one point she takes off a coat while walking down a flight of stairs, and I'm sorry, but I would never. Still you're enough on the side of the character that it's okay, and I suppose it's much preferable to making her extra helpless.
The three conmen have their own internal dramas. Krenna's Mike is "the nice one", a man who genuinely seems to like Susy and really want to resolve the whole thing without having to hurt her. Weston's Carlino, a man still clearly stinging from whatever caused his dismissal from the police force, has a harder exterior. But it's Arkin's Roat, a real dyed-in-the-wool psychopath that makes this film the memorable little horror-thriller it is. Roat's direct interactions with Susy in the final act are chilling. It's like watching a predator play with its prey just for fun. When Susy says that she was on to him, he responds, "Not all the way, Susy. Even now, not all the way."
I'd remembered hating the character of Gloria, but after some initial truly awful behavior, she proves to be a sassy and capable second banana.
But you know who IS the worst? Sam. Thank goodness he's out of the picture for most of the movie because gross. The actor is only 11 years older than Hepburn, but they visibly look further apart. And the apparent age gap makes his patronizing behavior towards her really hard to take. I suppose the most charitable reading of his character is that he wants his wife to be safe and independent, but this comes out in the most mean-spirited and condescending ways. Susy drops something and asks where it is, to which he responds, "You can find it." Dude. It would be one thing if Susy wasn't making an effort and he was trying to motivate her, but Susy is clearly trying very hard. When Susy tells him that Gloria has been endangering her by maliciously rearranging the furniture, he brushes this off like it's no big deal. The absolutely worst moment comes at the end of the film when
WARNING: spoilers below
instead of going to his wife who has been tormented, almost killed, and just generally terrorized for the last few hours, he makes her walk across their trashed and corpse-strewn apartment to him
instead of going to his wife who has been tormented, almost killed, and just generally terrorized for the last few hours, he makes her walk across their trashed and corpse-strewn apartment to him
. Sam--and Susy's simpering deference to him, "I'll be anything you want me to be!"--costs this film a half point, no joke.
I have some very sentimental feelings about this film, as I vividly remember my family watching this together when I was about 10 years old. I also remembered my parents' instructions that it's a movie to watch in as close to darkness as possible.
There are some cliched frustrations with the plot and characters, things like
maybe you should lock the door or
maybe you should call the police. But the pace of the film is good enough and the characters compelling enough that those frustrations mainly becomes background noise.