Wonderful Movie

One of my all time favorites.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

I watched this for the first time in the middle of the day, with the lights on, on my laptop. It still scared the spit out of me. That terror is only heightened when the lights go out and the screen gets bigger. Audrey Hepburn is my favorite actor of all time, and this is my favorite performance of hers.

I had great expectations from this movie, especially seeing the high rating and the actors' names. What I got instead proved to be an extremely naive "thriller/mystery" that left me with more questions than answers. For example, why wouldn't she just give them the damn doll?!! Or why send the little girl in the park to look for her husband so that he can come with the police instead of just sending her directly to the police station? Even the way the criminals tried to convince her to give up the doll is not at all convincing? What happened to good old physical methods that are so common in today's movies? And so on and so forth, I could just go on and on forever. Disappointed, that's what sums it.

WAIT UNTIL DARK is one of those expert stage plays that's translated beautifully to film. It's the classic one-room story, proving that you don't need endless changes of location to keep a film varied, interesting, and light-footed, and it has a wonderful script that segues from light-hearted humour and interaction to a deadly serious game of survival. In many ways, this is a film made before its time. Audrey Hepburn is the tough woman-in-peril a full twelve years before Ellen Ripley made the character a stereotype, and the climatic, well-remembered shock sequence in which Alan Arkin returns from the dead neatly prefigures the endless recycling of the villains in the likes of '80s slasher fare such as Friday the 13th.It's one of those films which is pure entertainment to watch. Everything is spot on: the acting, the set, the script, the music. There's no rush to get on with the plot in hand, no grated-on action sequences, just endless suspenseful moments, a growing mystery, and punctuations of twists and turns that never disappoint. Audrey Hepburn, lovely in the role of the blind woman being stalked by three sinister figures, is perfectly cast and never fails for a moment to convince that she's a disabled woman. Of the rest of the cast, it's Alan Arkin who steals the scenes with his evil-personified persona of 'Roat', and Richard Crenna who excels as one of the bad guys who actually turns out to be not so bad after all.Things gradually build up to a fitting crescendo, a pay-off that fits the bill perfectly and ends the film as it could only be ended. Only one thing surprises me: that Hitchcock didn't direct this. I'm not saying Terence Young did a bad job, just that if Hitchcock had directed it then many more people would remember it today than they do now. It's a shame, as this is every bit as good as some of the master film-maker's mystery movies.

Terence Young's Wait until Dark, based on Frederick Knott's gimmicky stage play, is as an exceptional suspense drama - a perfect example of how mood, atmosphere, music, and direction can overcome plot contrivances.The plot lurks around Suzy Hendrix (Audrey Hepburn, in a superior performance), a recently blinded NYC housewife whose husband Sam is determined to make "the world's champion blind lady" out of her. Although she can handle most of her daily chores alone, she still requires some help from Gloria, the dorky pre-teen girl who lives upstairs. Unbeknownst to her, Sam has accidentally played into the hands of heroin-smuggling mole who plants a dope-loaded doll in his possession. It doesn't take long for Suzy to get herself in trouble when a group of con men grease their way into her apartment in an elaborate plot to locate the doll. Two of them are merely petty con-men, but their employer Harry Roat (Alan Arkin who is unbelievably creepy) is a sinister monster. From there on, the movie ruthlessly tightens the screws of tension, all leading up to the nail-biting climax, as Roat and Suzy come face to face in her pitch-dark apartment.The film makes little effort to overcome its origins as a play, as the majority of the action takes place in Suzy's apartment. Though some of the more contrived elements of Knott's play are still intact here, Terence Young's presentation of Suzy's cloistered surroundings trumps the script's far-fetched tendencies as he manages to create a paradoxical environment of civilization devoid of human life. Also, Young makes the smart decision of setting his thriller inside a basement apartment, the cave-like arches of which have the unsettling effect of positioning Hepburn in a nondescript underground (the windows only look out on the feet of passersby, emphasizing Suzy's disconnect from her neighborhood). Terence Young's remarkable ability to create a believable oppressive locality in Wait until Dark obscures plot holes and irrationalities right up to the film's extended final showdown. By the time Suzy realizes she's completely and hopelessly alone in her apartment, the cumulative effect of Hepburn's palpable desolation and Arkin's ruthlessness, combined with Henry Mancini's overpoweringly harrowing score, bring the film to a justly celebrated climactic bacchanalia, complete with one of suspense cinema's first and most effective shock leaps.Once seen, Wait until Dark will never be forgotten. But be wary if you watch it alone. In fact, watch it with someone who likes to scream!