Did I miss a credit for the 1939 French film of which this is a re-make if not a plagiarism? It only took me a few moments to clue in that I had seen this before down to even some of the shots used. Did I miss something in the credits, and does anyone know how this was allowable at the time?
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I didn't see it in the credits, but I wasn't looking for it. The parallel to Le Jour se leve didn't dawn on me until well into the picture!
From the trivia on "Le jour se lève":
With RKO's 1947 remake, The Long Night (1947), the Studio tried to have all original prints of Le jour se lève destroyed.
If they did tried to destroy all original prints, I guess they wouldn't bother credit the original film. :x
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inevertoldyouwhatidoforaliving
Like the others posting here, I cannot recall seeing Le Jour se lève mentioned anywhere in 'The Long Night' credits. I don't think there is any enforceable rule or code that compels a film to list earlier versions, even the original, but I may be wrong. It does give the title and author, Jacques Viot, of the story that both films are based on, so maybe that is all that was/is required. I saw the French film while living in Bruxelles many years ago, but actually only discovered The Long Night recently. I love them both, although they are such different films. Fortunately the dvd release (Kino Video) that I have of 'TLN' does mention the French film; in fact the main menu of the DVD has it listed, with it's own link to an extras section which takes you to a page with a short declaration: "The Long Night is a remake of Marcel Carne's 1939 film 'Le Jour se lève'..", and goes on to say that the filmmakers of the 1947 film took many liberties with the narrative, drastically altering the ending, etc. But more interesting is that it has another sub-menu with 2 scenes from 'The Long Night', each with the corresponding scene from Le Jour se lève for comparison, which is sort of interesting to see. But yeah, I'm surprised to see that the later film does not credit the former. Something that I hadn't realized before and just saw when reading about Le Jour se lève is that Jacques Prévert wrote the script. I recognized the name because I've seen it for many years as a co-writer (the lyrics are from his poem "Les Feuilles mortes") of the song 'Autumn Leaves', an old jazz standard that came from an American film of the same name. As a jazz musician myself I've played the song countless times. Prévert also wrote the script for The Night Visitors, another film I saw in a theatre in Bruxelles, and several others. Excuse the digression... anyway, now I would like to find the 1939 film on dvd, if it exists. Thanks.
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