Truly Dreadful Film

The greatest movie ever made..!

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

Dear Hubert Cornfield,your film was a tense hostage drama with a very European feel. I say European feel because the film was quite slow and you took a lot of time with the scenes. The title sequence with the gorgeous Pamela Franklin simply dozing is an example of this. There were hardly any dialogs in the first 30 minutes. And it was set in Paris too.It was a great idea to place most of the action in a beach cottage. The sound of waves as the characters fought with each other and the tension grew was nice to listen to. Nothing like the sound of waves in a film. I don't think you used the setting to its full potential.Some of the things that created tension between the gang of kidnappers were a bit silly and clichéd. Like Richard Boone who was a bit psychotic. Why did they involve him in their plot in the first place? Rita Moreno's drug problem and her actions after she sniffs cocaine were also a bit hard to digest. These character deficiencies seemed to be uninspired. But then, they all sort of explain themselves in the end when it is revealed that this was all Pamela Franklin's premonitory dream. What was up with that ending? Jeez, who thought that up?Rita Moreno as the drug addicted air hostess was sexy as hell. Brando had a few opportunities to show his histrionic skills. His body language was great as usual. This film was made before he started to put on weight. But his blonde hair was a bit ridiculous. Richard Boone as the psychotic gangster and Jess Hahn as the level headed gang member who keeps it all together were very respectable. Pamela Franklin did not have much to do except look scared and show off her fat thighs.The film never really rises above a certain level. But the beautiful actors, the locales and the interesting background score makes this film worth a watch.Best Regards, Pimpin.(7/10)

The film begins with a young lady being kidnapped by two men (Marlon Brando and Richard Boone). It's an oddly muted kidnapping, as you really don't hear any dialog until about 12 minutes into the film. Then, at first, Boone appears like a pretty nice kidnapper--though later, he seems to be a bit of a sadist. In addition, Brando's girlfriend (Rita Moreno) is caught by him getting stoned. When Brando sees these two problems, he wants out--he wants to release the girl and forget about everything. However, his friend is able to convince him to stick it out--against his better judgment.It's amazing watching this film, as apart from a VERY emotive scene involving Brando having what appears to be a temper tantrum, the folks in the film seem as if they are all on an painkillers--LOTS of them. Too subdued and too slow-paced, this is a hard film to like. Even with the nice ending (and it was pretty tense), the film was STILL very emotionally subdued. Overall, not a bad movie but it EASILY could have been so much better. The film needs life. And, its ending was one of the WORST I've seen in a long time, and I watch A LOT of films.

Marlon Brando is among a group of no-goodniks who put the snatch on a British heiress, seventeen-year-old Pamela Franklin, in France. The other kidnappers include Rita Moreno, Jess Hahn, and Richard Boone.You can tell right away that Boone is going to be the standout villain of this edgy piece. His face resembles something a child might rudely plaster together out of lumps of modeling clay. The pock marks, pustules, ill-placed dimples, and other blemishes would have to be added later by a more accomplished sculptor. Boone has a habit of pursing his lips and tucking his tongue into his cheek while he squints, as if examining a loose tooth. His very laugh is a hoarse, smoke-cured cackle.The movie maybe should have been all about Boone. He doesn't have to do more than wander around peering through shop windows and having coffee at a couple of sidewalk cafés in Paris in order to keep our interest.Unfortunately, the movie has a plot and the plot torpedoes it and it sinks with all hands. The model here is the gang that gets together to pull off some caper, with some tension between the members, and a final shot at a double cross. Sometimes the plot is relatively simple, as in "Ronin" or "Odds Against Tomorrow", and sometimes it turns positively rococo, as in David Mamet's "Heist." But the rule is that everyone in the gang, for reasons of his own, must pull together until enough tension is generated to precipitate the final violent confrontation.Not here. The gang is holed up with its captive in a pretty cottage on the bare and windswept coast of the English channel. Franklin has been warned never to step outside. But, thinking everyone is asleep, she tiptoes down the stairs and tries to step over the slumbering figure of Boone. Boone grabs her ankle, she shrieks, and he peeks up her tiny skirt. Then Boone shouts at Franklin and shakes her a bit before Brando appears and puts a stop to it, sending Franklin back upstairs to bed.Next scene: Brando is arguing with his friend, Jess Hahn, slamming the kitchen table and accusing Boone of being "psycho", of having slapped Franklin around, of punching her, of slamming her head against the wall. The audience has seen no such thing. The discontinuity between what actually happened and Brando's fantastic description of it makes one wonder exactly who is "psycho" around here. Of course it's true that Boone did peek up her skirt but who wouldn't? Pamela Franklin is so yummy that any perfectly normal man might be excused for wanting to nibble her kneecap. Who does Brando think he is, anyway -- judging people so freely? It's not as if HIS escutcheon were without blots.In fact, though, Brando is pretty good with this unchallenging material. This is not the obese Brando of later years. He's tan and fit, his jaw robust, his lips tiny, and he paces along with a stride that perfectly blends insouciance with purposiveness. He's a man here who knows where he's going, although he must have wondered from time to time how he wound up in this picture. The director, Hubert Cornfield, certainly wondered. Brando refused to do some scenes, showed up drunk for another, and demanded direction from Richard Boone for another.The scene directed by Boone is the kitchen argument between Brando and his friend Hahn. Aside from the fact that it comes far too soon in the scenario -- I mean, they've only just kidnapped the girl that day and Brando is already fed up with the scheme and thinks it will fail because of Boone -- it lasts too long and gives Jess Hahn an opportunity to prove that he may be a great and bulky screen presence like some other supporting players, but he just can't act. Rita Moreno does better but she's stuck with this tar baby too.Cornfield ends the movie as he began it, with Pamela Franklin waking up aboard an airplane about to land in Paris. He says he got the idea from a British film called "The Dead of Night." I don't doubt him. The problem is that this roundabout business BELONGS in a nightmare like "Dead of Night," just as it belonged in a life-course novel like "Finnegans Wake." But what is it doing in a caper movie? What's the point? What was Cornfield thinking -- or was he thinking at all? Imagine if, in "The Asphalt Jungle", Sterling Hayden woke up and it was all a dream and the movie started all over at the beginning. Well?

What I like most about Night of the Following day is its sublime way in introduces France. The entire film is low-key, which is not quite seen nowadays in cinema. Plus there was Marlon Brando. Brando looks great in this film. His style of dress looks like he's modeling for some design that counts on black colors to the exclusion of all others. In one scene he's wearing an olive trench coat at an airport. Somehow I could not believe that this swank and bronzed and blonde-haired movie star could abet in the same crime as his associates. The only worth-while scenes are the ones Brando's in. Only because you don't know where they're going to end. Richard Boone, Rita Moreno, and the actor who plays her brother are all thinly written characters. Rita Moreno's character snorts heroin, her brother is an ineffectual non-entity who doesn't care whether he's killed as a result of committing this crime, and Richard Boone's character has sadistic tendencies. That's all the audience knows about these three characters. We even know less about Brando's character. But Brando can transcend the material in this shallow film because of his eerie star-quality. Night of the Following Day is indeed an ambitious film. Adapting a novel is ambitious in itself. A plot revolving around a volatile foursome kidnapping an heiress and hiding her out in a house somewhere in France sounds great on paper. But the audience must be engaged and somewhat let in on something. This film keeps the audience at a cool distance.