The night of size

Some weeks back, Eddie Muller's choice for Noir Alley was a film new to me, The Big Night. Since it's available on DVD, I recorded it and watched it to do a full-length post here.

George La Main (John Drew Barrymore, credited here as John Barrymore Jr.) is a young man turning 17 and living with his widower father Andy (Preston Foster), who lives over the bar he runs. George is apparently a bit soft for 17 considering the way the youths outside pick on him, while Dad and dad's coworker at the bar have made a birthday cake for George.

Into this blissful family scene walks sportswriter Al Judge (Howard St. John), with an odd request. He asks Andy to take off his shirt and show some skin! Andy first takes off his dress shirt, and then his undershirt, and is told to get on his hands and knees. At this point, Al starts caning Andy, with a distressed George watching!

Al leaves and Andy doesn't explain what happened or why, such as why he would put up no resistance. But George knows this senseless attack needs to be addressed! Fortunately, there's a big fight tonight and Andy had tickets, so Georges takes them and a gun and heads off, since a famous sportswriter is certain to be there too.

At the fight, George meets Dr. Cooper (Philip Bourneuf) after selling him what was Dad's ticket, and Cooper proceeds to help George on his quest to find Judge, although George doesn't tell Cooper exactly who he's looking for or why. Along the way, George meets Cooper's girlfriend Julie (Dorothy Comingore), and Julie's good-girl kid sister Marion (Joan Lorring). When they all end up at Marion and Julie's place, Julie takes a liking to George and takes the gun from him after he passes out drunk. She knows George and a gun put together will only lead to no good.

But George finds the gun and heads out of the apartment to continue his search for Judge. Eventually one of Judge's co-workers at the newspaper gives George some vital information leading to Judge's whereabouts as well as the shocking reason of why Judge beat the crap out of Andy....

The Big Night is an interesting but odd little movie. In many ways there's not much of a plot, just a series of scenes put together, although some of them are quite striking, notably the black nightclub singer whom George sees and finds beautiful, but.... Barrymore is surprisingly good as the not-quite-a-man (Barrymore was 19 playing 17), even if the opening scene seems way off. He's got a bit of an odd look about him, one that's not quite fresh-faced, but also not experienced in the ways of the world, and it mostly works for the movie.

Script problems aside (which have to do with the looming blacklist and that several people involved with the movie wound up leaving the US), The Big Night is definitely worth a watch for Barrymore's performance.