seymourblack-1 This decidedly creepy screen adaptation of Cornell Woolrich's novel of the same name is offbeat and gripping right from the start. Its story of a man who's troubled by his ability to foresee the future, becomes increasingly distressing as his unwanted talent gradually destroys his life and fills him with guilt about the tragedies that he sees in his "visions". Sadly, because his visions can't be controlled and no-one can change the hand of fate, there seems to be no way out of this man's personal Hell.Suicidal heiress Jean Courtland (Gail Russell) is standing on a bridge, poised to leap in front of an on-coming train, when her fiancé Elliott Carson (John Lund) suddenly appears and prevents her from jumping. When the young couple retreat to a nearby café and meet up with the man who'd saved Jean's life by alerting Elliott to the danger that she was in, their conversation proves to be very enlightening.John Triton (Edward G Robinson) explains that twenty years earlier, he and Jean's parents, Whitney (Jerome Cowan) and Jenny (Virginia Bruce), had been partners in a touring vaudeville act in which he was a phoney mind-reader, his best friend Whitney played the piano and his fiancée Jenny was the glamorous assistant. During this period, John started to have visions that proved to be accurate predictions of future events and Whitney capitalised on this by using John's tips to prosper through gambling and playing the stock market. One night when they were all on stage together, John became terribly upset and had to bring the performance to a sudden end when he had a vision of Jenny, after their marriage, dying in childbirth. In order to prevent this premonition from becoming a reality and without telling his partners what he'd "seen", he decided to leave the act and simply disappear (but not before giving Whitney some advice about making an investment in an oil business).John became a recluse and after some time had passed with no word from him, Whitney and Jenny married but Jenny subsequently died in childbirth. John went on to live a very quiet and lonely life in the Bunker Hill district of L.A. until a short time before Jean's suicide attempt, when he contacted her because he'd had a vision of Whitney dying in a plane crash. Jean's efforts to contact her father proved unsuccessful and as predicted, he perished in the wreckage of his plane.Elliott is very sceptical and thinks that John's a charlatan working on some sort of scam to get his hands on Jean's money but Jean trusts him implicitly. This is because she remembers how fondly her father had spoken of his best friend and his impressive psychic powers. John then becomes distraught after having a vision in which he foresees Jean's death and despite the apparent futility of the idea, becomes absolutely determined to prevent her demise.This moody thriller has a strange mesmeric quality and a level of tension that grows steadily with each new development. Its ominous atmosphere is beautifully complemented by Victor Young's effective score and John F Seitz's top class cinematography, but it's the knockout performance by Edward G Robinson that provides the real icing on the cake. His tragic character sums up his predicament at one point when he says that "this gift which I never asked for and don't understand has brought me only unhappiness". Having lost the love of his life and his best friend because of his gift and being condemned to a life of isolation and loneliness , he then gets openly disrespected by most people who think he's a fraud or a criminal and knows that all he faces in the future is the unending torment that he'll inevitably experience until his own demise.What Robinson captures so brilliantly is John Triton's innate decency as well as the melancholia that has understandably engulfed him as a result of his experiences. The supporting cast is also consistently good with Gail Russell standing out as a great choice for her role because her appearance and deportment make her privileged but troubled character so convincing.

JLRMovieReviews Edward G. Robinson lends some dignity to "Night Has a Thousand Eyes," which concerns a fake psychic, who reads peoples' minds and answers their questions about love and happiness, but the psychic soon discovers he has strange premonitions about people dying. These premonitions come true. We open on Gail Russell, running at night paranoid of being watched and about to end her life, but John Lund saves her. The film's story is told by way of flashbacks in the beginning as to how Edward knew her father and how Edward affects her life. A mystery soon develops, as her father dies from a plane crash (which he predicted) but the plane had been sabotaged. Edward is trying to help Gail find the killer, but the police suspect him. The main criticism of the film is that it has a depressing and foreboding sense of doom which bogs the film down too much, making it feel rather heavy-handed. But director John Farrow gives it grade-A production values, and Robinson is always good in everything he does and he makes this more of must-see movie experience with him than it would be without him. By the end, you'll probably be impressed with him but a little depressed, considering the ending

calvinnme The first scene is Elliott Carson (John Lund) rescuing his fiancée, Jean Courtland (Gail Russell) from committing suicide - he was told where and how by John Triton. He takes her into a nearby café where John Triton (Edward G. Robinson) is sitting at one of the café tables. Elliot assumes because of Jean's wealth that Triton is part of some kind of con game. Triton then begins his story in flashback. Years before he had a vaudeville act in which he pretended to be one who could see the future. As he says, "it was a phony act, but it was a first-class phony act". Then one night in the middle of a show he has his first real premonition and tells one particular woman that her child is in danger and she must run home. Another time he is talking to a little boy behind the theater and has a premonition that he will be run over by a car. He says something to change the boys plans - he gives him free tickets to the show. The boy says he needs to go tell his mom and, of course, he's run over by a car anyways. Meanwhile his - let us be kind and just call him "less deep and thoughtful" - colleague, Whitney Courtland (Jerome Cowan), is using John's ability to make a fortune in finance.Meanwhile John is haunted by the bad premonitions he is getting about which he can do nothing. The last is the worst though. He sees the future of his love, Jenny (Virginia Bruce). In his premonition the two marry, there is a child, the child lives but Jenny dies. So one night he clears out and decides to become a recluse. If he doesn't talk to anyone he can't see their bad end which he can't seem to change anyways. He knows Whitney will take care of Jenny, and he does. The two marry, have a child, and just as in his premonition, Jenny dies in childbirth. Gail Russell's character, Jean, is the daughter that would have been his, so he does keep track of her over the years. He moves to L.A. just to be in the same town as she and her dad. And then the trouble starts again. First he gets a premonition about Whitney's death when he hears about him trying to break a flight record. Thus he chances meeting Jenny's daughter Jean and warns her about the premonition he has. She tries contacting her dad, but it's too late. His plane has cracked up and Whitney is dead. Then John gets a premonition about Jean's death "under the stars", and we are back to the present, in the café.John wants to retreat back into his little world, but not until he can finally save someone, and not just anyone. He wants to save the daughter that might have been his had things been different. Of course now he has the suspicious fiancé to contend with along with the police whom the fiancé calls who say they found foul play involved in the crack up of Whitney's plane and suspect John as being part of some conspiracy plus they think he could be a little nuts and have the police psychiatrists examining him. Meanwhile Jean is in danger and is being guarded by skeptics. How will this all pan out? Watch and find out.Edward G. Robinson plays the melancholy clairvoyant just brilliantly as you can see how this supposed gift is weighing him down. Like Peter Boyle in the X-Files episode "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose", a gift is not much of a gift if all it does is give you visions of pain and death you can't seem to change. It is a very gloomy film from the start with the atmosphere of a noir, but not with the kinds of characters and situations normally associated with noir. Highly recommended.

Spikeopath Night Has a Thousand Eyes is directed by John Farrow and adapted to screenplay by Barre Lyndon and Jonathan Latimer from the novel of the same name written by Cornell Woolrich. It stars Edward G. Robinson, Gail Russell, John Lund, Virginia Bruce, William Demarest, Richard Webb and Jerome Cowan. Music is scored by Victor Young and cinematography by John F. Seitz.John Triton (Robinson) is a nightclub fortune teller who suddenly finds he really does posses psychic ability. As his predictions become more bleaker, Triton struggles with what was once a gift but now is very much a curse.During a visually sumptuous beginning to the film, a girl is saved from suicide, it's an attention grabbing start and sets the tone for what will follow. Mood and strangulated atmosphere born out by photographic styles, craft of acting and Young's spine tingling score are the keys to the film's success, with the pervading sense of doom ensuring the narrative never falls into mawkish hell. It's a film that shares thematic similarities with a 1934 Claude Rains picture titled The Clairvoyant, only here we enter noir territory for Triton's cursed journey, where as the Rains movie was ultimately leading us to the savage idiocy of mob justice.Farrow's (The Big Clock/Where Danger Lives) film falls into a small quasi supernatural group of black and whites that are formed around a carnival/psychic act. It's a situation for film that film noir makers sadly didn't explore more often, making the likes of Night Has a Thousand Eyes, Nightmare Alley and The Spiritualist little treasures to be cherished. Farrow gets as much suspense out of the story as he can, of which he is helped enormously by the great work of Robinson. At a time when the HUAC was breathing down his neck, Robinson turns in a definitive portrayal of a man caught in a trap, his fate sealed. His face haunted and haggard, his spoken words sorrowful and hushed, Robinson is simply terrific.The world of prognostication gets a film noir make-over, death under the stars indeed. 8/10