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Título: Middle of the Night
Año: 1959
País: Estados Unidos
Director: Delbert Mann
Productor: George Justin
Elenco:
Kim Novak - Betty Preisser
Fredric March - Jerry Kingsley
Glenda Farrell - Mrs. Mueller, Betty's Mother
Albert Dekker - Walter Lockman
Martin Balsam - Jack
Lee Grant - Marilyn
Lee Philips - George Preisser
Edith Meiser - Evelyn Kingsley
Joan Copeland - Lillian Kingsley
Betty Walker - Rosalind Neiman, the Widow
Lou Gilbert - Sherman
Rudy Bond - Gould
Effie Afton - Mrs. Carroll
Jan Norris - Alice Mueller
David Ford - Paul Kingsley
Guión: Paddy Chayefsky
Música: George Bassman
Fotografía: Joseph C. Brun
Duración: 118 min.
Sinopsis:
Scripter Paddy Chayevsky altered his successful stageplay for this routine cinematic version of Middle of the Night, emphasizing the self-centered interests of the relatives and friends who surround Jerry Kingsley (Fredric March). Jerry is a widower, a lonely but successful clothing manufacturer who falls in love with Betty Preisser (Kim Novak), one of his employees. The employee-boss relationship is one hurdle the erstwhile couple have to overcome, another is the thirty-year difference in their ages, and the last is the attitudes of the couples' relatives -- each close relative (mother, daughter, sister) feels marginated by the relationship, left out in the cold, forgotten. These attitudes do not bode well for any future walk up the aisle. Director Delbert Mann is best known for his 1955, award-winning Marty. (http://www.allmovie.com)
Movie Review
Middle of the Night (1959)
June 18, 1959
Lonely People; Middle of Night' Is at Two Theatres
By BOSLEY CROWTHER
Published: June 18, 1959
PADDY CHAYEFSKY'S skill at probing average people who are lonely, insecure and who spend much time fumbling and groping for the comfort of sheer companionship is brought to the screen again most fitly in the picture version of "Middle of the Night." This film from Mr. Chayefsky's Broadway stage play opened yesterday at the Forum (formerly the Odeon) and the Trans-Lux Fifty-second Street.
This time, the lonely-hearts expert, whose best job of matchmaking to date was that of pairing off Marty, the fat Bronx butcher, with a school-teaching old maid, is playing successful shatchen to a middle-aged manufacturer from New York's garment district and a 24-year-old divorcée. While the romantic aura of the union is brighter than its prospects of success, the obvious assumption of the author is that it's going to turn out okay.
We wouldn't want to bet money on it—not as much money, anyway, as we'd have bet on the future of the union that was finally resolved on the stage. In the first place, the garment manufacturer that a hard-working Fredric March plays looks a little too old and doddering to be taking a 24-year-old bride. And the young lady, played by Kim Novak, seems too much of a badly mixed-up kid to be settling down quietly with a grandpa on West End Avenue.
That's by the by, however. The film is not concerned with the success of the marriage that is pending, but only with the courtship of the pair. And that is made thoroughly tempestuous and harrowing in this intimate screen view. By the time the playwright gets through poking them, the participants would seem too tired to care.
In this respect, the picture has more to offer than did the play. The characters are more intense and driven by their lonely and neurotic moods. They fumble and paw at each other in a more avid and frenzied way, and their squabbles and indecisions are more violent and sweaty with pain. Mr. Chayefsky and Delbert Mann, the director, have worked for the taut, dramatic thing. They haven't wasted much time on humor. This is loneliness, boy, and it is grim.
But something that was quite attractive on the stage is not in the film. That is the humor and the temperament of a particular ethnic group. Mr. March is an excellent actor when it comes to showing joy and distress but he isn't successful at pretending to be a Jewish papa and business man. He goes with the flavor of his family, which is very colloquially played by Edith Meiser, Joan Copeland and Martin Balsam, about as poorly as spoon-bread goes with lox. And when he takes his girl to the Catskills for a resort-hotel New Year's Eve, he stands out from the well-defined environment as sharply as if he were wearing a burnoose.
His isn't the garment manufacturer that Edward G. Robinson played.
As for Miss Novak's secretary and unsettled divorcée she is plainly designed to be erratic, frightened and immature, so that Miss Novak's fluttery performance is inevitably in the shifty mood. It is as hard to discover precisely what she is aiming to be as it is to discover what Glenda Farrell, as her mother, is trying to convey. Obviously both these characters are lacking self-discipline.
That's why we wouldn't bet much money on the happy union Mr. Chayefsky has strenuously arranged. But we must say it is vigorous, tense and touching while the arrangements are being made.
Middle of the Night is a story of a May/December romance. Written by Paddy Chayefsky and directed by Delbert Mann. Mann directed three films written by Cheyefsky, Marty, his first film which won Best Picture of the Year and Best Director awards, followed by The Bachelor Party and Middle of the Night. Later on Cheyefsky would write the screenplays for Network and The Hospital. He also adapted the William Bradford Huie novel, The Americanization of Emily for the screen. Middle of the Night began as a TV episode on the anthology series “The Philco Television Playhouse”, starring E.G. Marshall and Eva Marie Saint. In 1956, Cheyefsky turned it into a play and it opened on Broadway with Edward G. Robinson as the older man and Gena Rowlands as the young woman. In 1959, the movie version was released with Fredric March and Kim Novak in the roles.
Jerry (Fredric March), a 56 year old lonely widower, is a successful businessman in the garment district in New York and 24 year old Betty (Kim Novak) is working there as a receptionist and part-time model. Betty is newly divorced and uncertain about her future. The story centers on their romance and eventual decision to marry, the ups and downs in any relationship and specifically about one with a wide age difference. One of the more uncomfortable scenes is when Jerry meets Betty’s mother who it turns out is approximately the same age as he is. Later there is an even more painful confrontation with his family, which includes his daughter, a year younger than Betty, and his single over protective nagging sister. Everyone seems to have an opinion though the one thing everyone is in agreement on is that they are against the marriage. If all that is not enough there are the couples own insecurities, Jerry’s jealousy when she talks to younger men or will she leave him in a few years? Betty anxieties are over her newly divorced husband, a musician who wants her back, and then there is her father fixation. In the end, despite all the objections from family and their own uncertainties they realize they love each other and maybe just maybe, they have a chance.
Fredric March is excellent as Jerry who at 56 feels that life has passed him by. Family and friends tell him that he should relax in his old age and take it easy. Jerry feels like everyone is ready to put him out to pasture until he starts dating Betty who makes him feel alive again. He tells everyone he’ll have enough time to take it easy when he’s dead! (Jerry would liked Warren Zevon’s song, I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead). You absolutely believe March in this role, the struggles and fears that he is facing at this particular junction in his life. Kim Novak also does a fine job as the young and insecure Betty whose father dumped his family when she was young. Conflicted about the breakup of her marriage she finds comfort and security with Jerry. She brings a nice vulnerability to Betty that makes her real. Throughout her career Novak has been underrated as an actress. She holds her own here with a magnificent cast that includes Lee Grant, Martin Balsam, Albert Dekker and Glenda Farrell. There are also some nice location scenes of New York’s garment district and other areas circa the late 1950’s.
One aspect that I found interesting is how old the actors look considering the age they are portraying. Fredric March who was 62 at the time portrays a man who is 56. Albert Dekker’s character was 59 ( he was 54 in real life), however both men look closer to being in their late 60’s maybe even in their 70’s. Compared to some of today’s actors equivalent in age like Dennis Quaid (55) or Jeff Bridges (59) or Harrison Ford (66) they looked much older than the ages they are portraying. Lifestyle? Healthier living? Whatever it is, people do look a lot young today than their counterparts of forty or fifty years ago.
Delbert Mann began his career during the Golden Age of Television drama. When people discussed directors from the Golden Age of Television who came to film in the late 50’s and early 60’s the names usually consist of John Frankenheimer, Sidney Lumet and Arthur Penn. Delbert Mann is rarely mentioned yet his filmography in those early years is pretty impressive. His debut film was Marty, which as previously mentioned won a few Oscars. That was followed by The Bachelor Party in 1957, Desire Under the Elms, Separate Tables, Middle of the Night and Dark at the Top of the Stairs. All of these were adaptations of stage plays except for Marty and The Bachelor Party. In the 1960’s Mann had success with two Doris Day comedies, That Touch of Mink and Lover Come Back. He made a few more films including Mister Buddwing and The Pink Jungle before going back to television in the 1970’s and 1980’s. While no auteur, Mann was a solid actor’s director and always told a good story.
****
Película:
Middle.of.the.Night.1959.DVDRip.XviD.AC3.avi 
Extras:
Middle.of.the.Night.1959.Theatrical.Trailer.DVDRip.XviD.AC3.avi Middle.of.the.Night.1959.Reflections.in.the.Middle.of.the.Night.DVDRip.XviD.AC3.avi Subtítulos:
Middle.of.the.Night.1959.DVDRip.XviD.AC3.idx Middle.of.the.Night.1959.DVDRip.XviD.AC3.sub Dardo escribió:Subtítulos en Español
Datos técnicos:
AVI File Details
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Capturas:
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En cn-cl están trabajando en la traducción de los subtítulos , así que no tardarán en aparecer. Espero que guste porque me parece una obra interesantísima, muy valiosa y con un protagónico formidable de Fredric March.
