FILM CHRONICLE
NIGHT PEOPLE
Ads for men's suits show the model standing against a sus–
pended mobile. But the man who buys knows that the mobile doesn't
come with the suit: it's there to make him feel that the old business
suit is different now. The anti-Sovietism of
Night People
serves a similar
function. But the filmgoer who saw the anti-Nazi films of ten years ago
will have no trouble recognizing the characters in
Night People,
just as
ten years ago he could have detected (under the Nazi black shirts) psy–
chopathic killers, trigger-happy cattle rustlers, and the screen villain of
earliest vintage-the man who will foreclose the mortgage if he doesn't
get the girl. The Soviet creatures of the night are direct descendants
of the early film archetype, the bad man . Those who make films like
Night People
mayor may not be privately concerned with the film's
political message (the suit manufacturer mayor may not be concerned
with the future of wire sculpture) ; in the film politics is period decor–
used to give melodrama the up-to-date look that will sell.
Night People
is set in Berlin: a U.S. soldier is kidnaped; he is res–
cued by a U.S. Intelligence Officer (Gregory Peck) who knows how to
deal with the Russians. They are "head-hunting cannibals" and must be
treated as such. The film is given a superficial credibility by documen–
tary-style shots of American soldiers, by glimpses of Berlin, and by the
audience's knowledge that Americans in Europe have in fact been kid–
naped. One might even conceive that someone who understood the na–
ture of Communism might view certain Communists as "cannibals." But
it would be a mistake to confuse the political attitudes presented in
Night People
with anything derived from historical understanding.
Nunnally Johnson, who wrote, directed, and produced the film, has re–
ferred to it as "Dick Tracy in Berlin." His earlier anti-Nazi production
The Moon is Down
could be described as "Dick Tracy in Norway,"
and many of his films could be adequately designated as just plain
"Dick T racy."
Actual kidnapings have posed intricate political and moral prob–
lems. Should the victim be ransomed by economic concessions, should a
