NIGHT MOVES

Fast talking Bogart wisecracks his way into Nazi trouble.

The Humphrey Bogart vehicle All Through the Night is sometimes overlooked thanks to Bogie’s array of top notch films, but it’s one vintage cinema fans should make the time to see. It’s a wartime thriller and mild propaganda piece dealing with a self-interested NYC gambler who discovers his inner patriot.

This is a character evolution Bogart made several times, for example in Casablanca and To Have and Have Not. It all begins begins when the beloved old neighborhood baker who makes Bogart’s favorite cheesecake is murdered. Bogie is compelled to find out who did it, and what develops is an amazing hard boiled thriller-cum-comedy, a visually dynamic, fast-paced flick that starts a mile a minute and picks up speed from there.

But there’s even more to it than meets the eye (to quote Bogart), something that will dawn on you as you notice the preponderance of foreign accents from Conrad Veidt, Kaaren Verne, Peter Lorre, et al. Hmm. What the heck are all these continental types doing in Bogie’s neck of the woods? Later one of the great reveals in vintage cinema history involves a painting of a highly newsworthy character and brings everything into sharp focus. That a film of such broad subtext begins when Bogart can’t get a piece of cheesecake is one of the many quirks of All Through the Night. Entertainment with a message isn’t always easy to accomplish. This film makes it look easy.

We’d be remiss if we didn’t also note that, due to a scattershot script that seeks laughs everywhere, you’ll get to see one of the more infamous racist gags of the era, one that’s even been included in documentaries on the subject. Everyone in the film is a caricature except Bogart, but in early cinema, white characters were portrayed as a vast array of personalities, while the few-and-far-between black characters were never explored with more than superficial interest. This is still something of a problem today, in our opinion. All Through the Night takes the bigoted route, but thankfully it’s brief, and we’d argue that it remains a movie to be seen. It premiered in the U.S. today in 1942.

World War II, All Through the Night, Humphrey Bogart, Conrad Veidt, Kaaren Verne, Phil Silvers, Jackie Gleason, Peter Lorre, William Demarest, poster art, cinema, movie review

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

April 22

1912—Pravda Is Founded

The newspaper Pravda, or Truth, known as the voice of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, begins publication in Saint Petersburg. It is one of the country’s leading newspapers until 1991, when it is closed down by decree of then-President Boris Yeltsin. A number of other Pravdas appear afterward, including an internet site and a tabloid.

April 22

1983—Hitler's Diaries Found

The German magazine Der Stern claims that Adolf Hitler’s diaries had been found in wreckage in East Germany. The magazine had paid 10 million German marks for the sixty small books, plus a volume about Rudolf Hess’s flight to the United Kingdom, covering the period from 1932 to 1945. But the diaries are subsequently revealed to be fakes written by Konrad Kujau, a notorious Stuttgart forger. Both he and Stern journalist Gerd Heidemann go to trial in 1985 and are each sentenced to 42 months in prison.

April 21

1918—The Red Baron Is Shot Down

German WWI fighter ace Manfred von Richthofen, better known as The Red Baron, sustains a fatal wound while flying over Vaux sur Somme in France. Von Richthofen, shot through the heart, manages a hasty emergency landing before dying in the cockpit of his plane. His last word, according to one witness, is “Kaputt.” The Red Baron was the most successful flying ace during the war, having shot down at least 80 enemy airplanes.

April 21

1964—Satellite Spreads Radioactivity

An American-made Transit satellite, which had been designed to track submarines, fails to reach orbit after launch and disperses its highly radioactive two pound plutonium power source over a wide area as it breaks up re-entering the atmosphere.

April 20

1939—Holiday Records Strange Fruit

American blues and jazz singer Billie Holiday records “Strange Fruit”, which is considered to be the first civil rights song. It began as a poem written by Abel Meeropol, which he later set to music and performed live with his wife Laura Duncan. The song became a Holiday standard immediately after she recorded it, and it remains one of the most highly regarded pieces of music in American history.

April 19

1927—Mae West Sentenced to Jail

American actress and playwright Mae West is sentenced to ten days in jail for obscenity for the content of her play Sex. The trial occurred even though the play had run for a year and had been seen by 325,000 people. However West’s considerable popularity, already based on her risque image, only increased due to the controversy.

April 19

1971—Manson Sentenced to Death

In the U.S, cult leader Charles Manson is sentenced to death for inciting the murders of Sharon Tate and several other people. Three accomplices, who had actually done the killing, were also sentenced to death, but the state of California abolished capital punishment in 1972 and neither they nor Manson were ever actually executed.