A Dive into Mystery: ‘Dead of Night’ (Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton, Basil Dearden and Robert Hamer, 1945)

Yesterday, we celebrated Halloween! Oooooohhh! (that’s the sound of a classic film ghost). And isn’t there a better occasion to talk about spooky movies? Those who make you shiver down your spine, make you worried about looking at a dark corner in your house or have to be followed by binge-watching a few cat videos. Because such an occasion has to be accompanied duly, Kristen from Hoofers and Honeys is back with a third edition of her Annual Spooky Classic Movie Blogahton! I participated once, in 2020, when I made a (3rd) list of films I recommended for Halloween. This time, I’ve decided to explore one film only: Dead of Night (1945).

Before going further, know that this article might have a few spoilers.

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We can use the blogathon as a reason to watch the film, but there shouldn’t be any excuses to do so. It’s just great. Being an anthology film, Dead of Night brings you to the heart of various spooky and creepy stories. Co-directed by Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton, Robert Hammer and Basil Dearden, and written by John Baines and Angus MacPhail, it revolves around characters’ memories and strange phenomenons they witnessed. There is a central point to all these stories, which allows the whole thing to go smoothly without weird cuts. It all starts when Mr Craig, an architect (played by Mervyn Johns, Glynis Johns’ father), arrives at a little cottage for some consultation for renovations. The host, Elliot Foley (Roland Culver), greets Craig and introduces him to some guesses. Only, Mr Craig’s reaction is not the courteous one you’ll expect of someone meeting someone else. There’s a lot of suspicion and disbelief in his body language. He finally reveals to the guest that, although he has never met them, they’ve all been part of a recurring dream. He also pretends to know what the course of the events will be during his visit. Some guests are initially sceptical but are all interested and fascinated by the situation and what Craig is witnessing. One of them, Dr van Straaten (Frederick Valk), a psychiatrist, is the most rational and doesn’t believe in such fantasies, that time can be alerted, or that surrealist events occur, etc. That leads the other guests to tell weird stories that happened to them or people they knew to convince the doctor that some things, sometimes, can’t be explained.

The Hearse Driver (dir. Basil Dearden) involves car race driver Hugh Grainger (Anthony Baird) who, after an accident, lives an unexplained time leap at the hospital, and a strange predicament saves him from death.

The youngest of the lot, Sally O’Hara (Sally Ann Howes), tells about the time when she was playing an alternative version of hide and seek during a Christmas party and discovered a hidden room with a sad little boy that probably turned out to be a ghost. This story is called The Christmas Party and directed by Alberto Cavalcanti.

The Haunted Mirror (dir. Robert Hamer) is told by Joan Cortland (Googie Whiters), who remembers the time she bought an antique mirror for her fiance, Peter (Ralph Michael), as an engagement gift. However, the beautiful object drove him crazy as it was showing him another room (so not what he was supposed to see in the reflection) and leaving him with a terrible feeling.

Foley narrates The Golfer’s Story (dir. Charles Crichton) that happened to two golfers he knew, George Parratt (Basil Redford) and Larry Potter (Naunton Wayne) – yes, Charters and Caldicott are back! As they fall in love with the same woman, they decide to play rounds of golf so the winner can win the lady as well. When Parratt wins dishonestly by cheating, Potter deliberately drowns himself in the lake nearby. He then comes back, as a ghost, to haunt Parratt and make him regret his act.

Finally, the doctor himself has a story, probably the creepiest. He remembers one of his patients in The Ventriloquist’s Dummy (dir. Alberto Cavalcanti). The ventriloquist, Maxwell Frere (Michael Redgrave), is in jail after having shot another ventriloquist, Sylvester Kee (Hartley Power). In a flashback telling us how everything led Frere to jail, we discover his dummy, Hugo, a creepy doll that seems to provoke a sense of dual personality… And maybe more.

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Being a film from the 40s, Dead of Night might not be as scary as later movies, especially if you compare how our standards evolve. However, on my second viewing, I found it much creepier and anguishing than what I remember. Each story manages to create a gloomy atmosphere where you feel that something is off, and that’s perhaps even scarier and more efficient than cheap jump scares. Although each story has something for itself and stands out in its own way, there’s no denying that ending this with The Ventriloquist’s Dummy was the best plan for the shock effect.

With his idea revolving around the dreams of Mr Craig, we are already confronted with something, not really scary, but intriguing. Weirdly, I was listening to that podcast just one the same evening I watched the film, where guests were telling strange stories that happened to them. One of the characters in the film, even reminded me of one of the stories! Talk about a coincidence.

The first story, The Hearse Driver, plays on the shock effect of the car accident, which is not shown in that much of a shocking way since it is filmed in a large shot from a certain distance. Then, at the hospital, things seem pretty “normal” according to the norm until we witness a weird jump in time. Like us, the patient, Hugh, has a strange feeling and tries to analyse the situation. What is especially anguishing is the silence. In the previous scene, the doctor and a nurse intervene, so there’s a lot of chaos, bright hospital lights and no space for mystery. Hugh is then left alone in his room and starts reading. We hear music in the background, probably coming from a radio. As the camera advances towards him, the music suddenly fades out, and only the clock ticking can be heard. Hugh is suspicious and doesn’t quite figure out how it could have stopped so suddenly. The camera moves towards the closed curtain, and you wonder if something will come out of it or if something that should be there is hidden behind it. That is an echo of what Hugh will discover down the street when he’ll open the curtains. To create a scary effect, the story bets on silence and emptiness (physical and psychological). And it works right. Although it is pretty short and simple, it’s brilliantly efficient and makes us uncomfortable in subtle ways.

The Christmas Party is more traditional in its form for how it chooses to scare us. When the whole truth is revealed, what happened to Sally becomes creepy. The idea of hidden places in big mansions adds to the effect of surrealism, as those might be mere fragments of our imagination. A character disappears and reappears later. We discover that he/she has seen something he/she shouldn’t have seen. In the case of Sally, her encounter with the little boy seems innocent at first, and that scene is pretty sweet. The poor kid is crying, and Sally comforts him and sings him a song while tucking him into bed. However, as tender as it is, our first thought is, what is this child doing so far away in the house when all the other kids play hide and seek? Clearly, he’s not “part of the game”. Has he been kidnapped and hidden? Is he lost? One thing we know, however, is that he’s crying because his sister “tried to kill him.” (in his own words). It’s after Sally goes back to join the group of kids and tell them about the little boy that we discover, to our disbelief, that she’d been talking to a ghost. In that way, The Christmas Party is probably the story with the most “gothic” feel to it because of a connection with the 19th century. This story was inspired by the real-life event of Constance Kent, who murdered her half-brother, Francis, when she was 16 and he was only 3, in 1860. Weirdly, she passed away at 100, only a year before Dead of Night was released._¹ Although the little boy Sally meets during the hide-and-seek session appears older, they kept the name Francis Kent. I wonder if that case was still part of the popular culture and known to the contemporaries of Dead of Night, creating an effect of the spectator knowing more than the film character. The way Francis is presented, well-mannered and sweet, reminded me of Miles in The Innocent (Jack Clayton, 1961), without the arrogance! The idea of a ghost crying also seems recurrent in some older classics. These are not poltergeists or ghosts causing trouble, but ghosts living their sorrow and making us weep with them and having compassion. In that way, we can think of The Innocents and The Uninvited (Lewis Allen, 1944).

The Haunted Mirror mixes surrealism and psychology. The idea of a mirror not showing what should be shown only to a particular character certainly could drive one crazy. Once again, there is a bond between present and past since the mirror is an antique, and the room Peter sees clearly belongs to another time. If we compare it to the design of the room he is standing in, it feels outdated. The Haunted Mirror is also a story of connection with possession since the situation goes much further than only seeing the wrong room in a mirror. [SPOILER| Joan discovers that the mirror once belonged to a man who killed his wife based on adultery suspicions before slicing his own throat. And, well, history sometimes repeats itself. Unless you find a way to avoid that… [END OF SPOILER] The Hunted Mirror is the first story to show us a scene of violence and murder attempt and, as it is longer than the previous ones, takes the time to establish the character’s psyche and make us wonder why he sees the mirror that way. It is also the first story that uses a cursed object as a theme of scariness. While going to the antique shop where she bought the mirror, Joan has the answer to what is happening to her fiancee. And then we wonder if there are other objects there that might cause similar troubles!

The Golfer’s Story is not scary (and I don’t think it is meant to be). After all, it virtually stars versions of Charters and Caldicott and acts as the film’s comic relief. Yes, there is an implication of suicide and the idea of “revenge”. However, the latter is done harmlessly, echoing supernatural comedies likeBlithe Spirit (David Lean, 1945). The story also mostly takes place on a golf course and in big, lively spaces, so we’re far from the idea of closeted rooms like it’s been the case in the first stories. It feels good to take a break from all the creepiness of the previous tells. Because we need to recharge our batteries, especially for what’s coming next. It’s not surprising Charles Crichton was designated for that particular story as he is a director I personally more often associate with comedy, a genre that he mastered cleverly. To refresh your memory, he is the director behind Ealing Studios comedies like Hue and Cry, Another Shore,and The Lavender Hill Mob. And, years later, he made his last film, and probably his best-known one: A Fish Called Wanda!

In The Ventriloquist’s Dummy, you’ll see Michael Redgrave like you’ve never seen him, and many will say that it is among its best performances. And they are right. I was introduced to Michael Redgrave as the jolly and charmingly arrogant Gilbert in The Lady Vanishes (Alfred Hitchcock, 1938). Here, we witness a different side of his role possibilities, showcasing his enormous versatility. Michael Redgrave was an actor of unsuspected twists and turns who could take us in all kinds of directions and emotions in the way he incarnated his roles to the fullest. Each time, although it’s always Michael Redgrave behind the mask, you believe in the marked distinction between his characters. In Dead of Night, he plays that ventriloquist who becomes completely miserable and bitter, “controlled” by his puppet or that form of dual personality, as mentioned before. The dummy, Hugo, is your typical creepy doll so common in horror movies. It’s even scarier when it seems to possess Frere’s or vice-versa and, in a way, take its own control instead of being controlled by its owner. All this leads to a final that will make you shiver for sure. The Ventriloquist’s Dummy inspired later cultural products, and it’s no wonder it became part of the popular culture for its efficiency and impact on its spectator. In The Twilight Zone episode “The Dummy”, Cliff Robertson plays a ventriloquist owning a dummy who appears to be as worrying as the one in Dead of Night. For their 2018 album Merrie Land, the band The Good, the Bad and the Queen used a shot of Michael Redgrave and “Hugo” as a cover², perhaps the shot we generally associate with the film.

Dead of Night has a little bit of everything for everybody as it shows a variety of stories that don’t resemble one another. On the technical plan, it bears well-known names of the film industry, assuring its narrative and technical qualities. Douglas Slocombe is a name you might see on several occasions. He was a reputed British cinematographer who worked on many of the Ealing Studios Comedies, The Great Gatsby (Jack Clayton, 1974), Jesus Christ Superstar (Norman Jewison, 1973), the first three Indiana Jones movies and more. We notice Dead of Night for its clean and clear image that echos to a gage of quality. He films night and day both well and has a talent for introducing contrast and shadows emphasizing the eery atmosphere. He also knows how to create a more playful atmosphere with The Golfer’s Story. Beautifully filmed, we’re lucky to have it available in beautiful transfer quality. By the way, if you’re interested in watching it, it is available via Kanopy. You might have free access to the platform if you have a subscription to your public library.

Another name that might ring a bell is Georges Auric, whose orchestral and anguishing music plays as soon as the opening titles begin. Georges Auric was a French composer who worked on many classics, notably Beauty and the Beast (Jean Cocteau, 1946), The Innocents, Roman Holiday (William Wyler, 1953), Bonjour tristesse (Otto Preminger, 1958), etc. He was a musical prodigy and composer whose work started before he was even 20, inspired by the greats of his time, like Eric Satie and Igor Stravinsky, before finding his own voice and style.

When Dead of Night was released on September 9, 1945, it received positive reviews and praise for its technical qualities. Monthly Film Bulletin recognized The Ventriloquist Dummy as the best story and approved of the comical relief provided by The Golfer’s Story³, a bit like mentioned before. The film is still considered of quality today. Well-known director Martin Scorsese placed it at the fifth position in his list of the 11 scariest films⁴, and Leonard Maltin gave it a rating of four stars out of four.⁵ Moreover, the film received the award for Most Interesting Screenplay at the 1946 edition of the Locarno Film Festival (the first edition).⁶ At the box office, it performed fairly well.

Locarno 1946

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Although Halloween is over, Dead of Night is, honestly, a film you can enjoy at any time of the year. Just let yourself immerse in those incredibly intriguing stories and enjoy!

A huge thanks to Kristen for hosting this fun blogathon! Make sure to read the other entries here.

See you! Now I’m off to watch some films noirs for Noirvember!

A little touch up!

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Sources :

1- Conolly, Jez; Bates, David Owain (2015). “‘I’m Not Frightened… I’m Not Frightened….'”. Dead of Night. Devil’s Advocates. Liverpool University Press. pp. 59–70. doi:10.2307/j.ctv13842kk.7

2-  “The Good, the Bad & the Queen: Merrie Land review – Damon Albarn’s scattergun sketch of Britain”. The Guardian. 16 November 2018.

3- .F.B (1945). “Entertainment Films”. Monthly Film Bulletin. Vol. 12, no. 141. British Film Institute. p. 105.

4-  Billington, Alex (30 October 2009). “Cool Stuff: Martin Scorsese Picks 11 Scariest Horror Movies of All Time!”. First Showing.

5- Leonard Maltin (29 September 2015). Turner Classic Movies Presents Leonard Maltin’s Classic Movie Guide: From the Silent Era Through 1965: Third Edition. Penguin Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-698-19729-9.

6- “1946- 1st Locarno Film Festival.” Locarno Film Festival. https://www.locarnofestival.ch/festival/palmares/1946.html.