Ray Milland was a very versatile leading man from the 1930s to the 1980s, winning an Academy Award for his performance in 1945 as an alcoholic in "The Lost Weekend". Here in "Night Into Morning" (1950), his character reacts to personal tragedy by hitting the bottle again.
Milland plays Phillip Ainley, a distinguished university English professor. After his wife and son die in a house fire, Milland understandably falls apart emotionally and begins to stay in a cheap hotel and drink heavily. His university co-workers Tom Lawry (John Hodiak) and war widow Katherine (Nancy Davis) worry about him but are unable to get him to snap out of his depression. He has a brief meeting with an alluring neighbor (Jean Hagen) in the hotel but spends most of his time getting drunk in the hotel lounge. After a drunk-driving accident and a humiliating court appearance, Ainley decides to commit suicide before Katherine arrives to tell him he has much to live for. The film ends with Ainley conducting his final English class of the semester before a classroom of adoring students.
The film is pretty pedestrian but does provide insights into the situation a person faces when he has lost about everything. The tragic and accidental loss of a spouse and a son is shown to have a devastating effect on Ainley. Besides the opening fire and Ainley's contemplated suicide, the film ambles with very little plot, just meandering from one vignette to another. It does have the novelty of starring future first lady Nancy Davis plus John Hodiak, whose career was sadly cut short when he passed away at age 41. Jean Hagen is wonderful as Ainley's pretty and lonely neighbor—it's too bad her part is so minor. Whit Bissell even appears as a dignified gravestone salesman who knows all about "Vermont Granite" monuments. "Night Into Morning" is a minor film, but it is worth a look for the cast and the tragic story.
Milland plays Phillip Ainley, a distinguished university English professor. After his wife and son die in a house fire, Milland understandably falls apart emotionally and begins to stay in a cheap hotel and drink heavily. His university co-workers Tom Lawry (John Hodiak) and war widow Katherine (Nancy Davis) worry about him but are unable to get him to snap out of his depression. He has a brief meeting with an alluring neighbor (Jean Hagen) in the hotel but spends most of his time getting drunk in the hotel lounge. After a drunk-driving accident and a humiliating court appearance, Ainley decides to commit suicide before Katherine arrives to tell him he has much to live for. The film ends with Ainley conducting his final English class of the semester before a classroom of adoring students.
The film is pretty pedestrian but does provide insights into the situation a person faces when he has lost about everything. The tragic and accidental loss of a spouse and a son is shown to have a devastating effect on Ainley. Besides the opening fire and Ainley's contemplated suicide, the film ambles with very little plot, just meandering from one vignette to another. It does have the novelty of starring future first lady Nancy Davis plus John Hodiak, whose career was sadly cut short when he passed away at age 41. Jean Hagen is wonderful as Ainley's pretty and lonely neighbor—it's too bad her part is so minor. Whit Bissell even appears as a dignified gravestone salesman who knows all about "Vermont Granite" monuments. "Night Into Morning" is a minor film, but it is worth a look for the cast and the tragic story.