Wuchak Released in 1968, "The Night of the Following Day" is a realistic crime drama featuring Brando as one of four professional criminals who kidnap a girl (a teenage Pamela Franklin) and hold up at a beach house in France. Richard Boone stars as the fiendish member, while Jess Hahn plays a likable loser, the brother of the pathetically drug addicted Rita Moreno.At the time of this picture Brando was 44 years old and never looked better physically -- very trim and blond. Brando didn't start getting fat until the later-70's when he was well into his 50's. In other words, people need to quit envisioning Brando as some fat dude; most of his life he wasn't. Most men in their mid-40's would kill to look as good as Brando did at the this age.BOTTOM LINE: Coming from the mid-60s when realism was fashionable this crime thriller is more of a crime drama, but suspense slowly builds to a compelling final act, which shows that crime doesn't pay, but people are redeemable if they qualify. There's also an unexpected twist that was fresh at the time, but is now eye-rolling.The film was shot during generally cloudy conditions in France and runs a short but sweet 93 minutes.GRADE: B-

Robert J. Maxwell 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?

Lolly2222 To call this movie "bad" is to pay it a compliment. There are superlatives, however: the worst musical score ever…worst-ever wig for Marlon (runner-up: Rita Moreno)…worst-ever ill-conceived kidnap plot and the list goes on. It's fortunate that this was not Marlon Brando's first role because it might have short-circuited an otherwise brilliant career.This movie was not a dream, but a nightmare. The only redeeming feature for me was that it was a free movie available on the Comcast cable network.The picture was so "European" that you get a greater appreciation of the abilities of the boys in Hollywood.This is a very short review, but it's more than the movie deserves.

kbrai another brando film from the 60s which got a lot of negative reviews when it came out. its not that bad at all in fact pretty interesting. brando has moments here which just underline the fact that he is the greatest ever.the movie could have been better, but the performances are very good. boone, moreno and of course brando. Brando is looking good with blonde hair and is fit and fine in all black...and his greeting to richard boone in the last half hour of the film is to die for...when he says clark gable..hilarious.the movie captures the deceit and confusion of its main players and the geography of the entire movie adds to the drama. There is an underlying feeling of violence about to be unleashed at any time in the movie.A movie which again says to all the critics of that time, that they did not have the knack of appreciating something which made them think and see the dark nature of man.