Inclubabu
Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.
Exoticalot
People are voting emotionally.
Janae Milner
Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.
Nicole
I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.
writers_reign
God knows over they years we've had some pretty pathetic actors in English movies - Maxwell Reed, Alan Lake, Michael Gough, Richard Todd, John Gregson, Keiron Moore, Richard Pascoe, Laurence Harvey, I could go on but you get the picture and I'm here to tell you that in this movie Patrick McGoohan makes all of the above look like Michael Redgrave and Donald Wolfit the epitome of subtlety. From his very first appearance all he needs is a sign on his back saying 'I'm the heavy here, Iago, get it?' It's cringe-making to watch and a Master Class in ham. Come back Arthur Mullard all is forgiven. On the plus side we do get to hear some tasty music from the likes of Dave Brubeck and Charles Mingus and Eng. Lit. students can have fun with the links to Othello - Keith Michell, as the Cassio figure is actually called Cass and McGoohan's wife Emily (Iago's wife was Emilia).
secondtake
All Night Long (1962)If you love jazz, you might want to check out this low budget, offbeat film about the fringes of the jazz scene as the Bob era was devolving into smaller commercial and (frankly) white audiences. It's set in Mod England, but the idea is quite American—the music, above all, but also the script and production.If you liked the television series "The Prisoner" you might also like checking out that show's star, Patrick McGoohan, who stars here. And then, if you appreciate very loose adaptations of Shakespeare (like the nearly concurrent "West Side Story") you might see the strains of Othello at work here.I liked it, but I know that it's largely just a curiosity, as a movie. Well, it's been deemed an "important" film by Criterion, which has released one of their spiffy (gorgeous) versions on DVD, and I think that's accurate, even if the dramatics (and a couple of plot tricks using a tape recorder) are sometimes strained. The whole enterprise feels like an art film, with a weird layer of pretension that I suppose comes from the Shakespearean overlay.As for the jazz? Well, Charles Mingus and Dave Brubeck should be enough for you. Great stuff that you just wish lasted longer. What else? There is a liberal acceptance of the mixing of cultures and races that's great (and you have to remember how weird this was in movies back then)—the two leads beyond McGoohan are a mixed-race couple. And then there is the set itself, a single spacious club with a stairway at one end, where the camera moves with crisp authority. Like lots of director Basil Dearden's movies, this one is different and fascinating and not quite as brilliant or insightful as it needs to be. But yeah, watch it. It's a subculture classic, for sure. With great music.
Robert J. Maxwell
I kind of looked forward to this -- Patrick McGoohan, Charlie Mingus, Dave Brubeck, Billy Shakespeare. How could it go wrong?But it's pretty slow and ultimately unbelievable. When I see a band manager being taunted by a drummer, McGoohan, and becoming enraged while stoned, instead of flinging himself on the couch with three bags of Doritos, there's something wrong. With dialog like, "Do you agree with Margolis that jazz is nothing more than regressive narcissism?", I shiver all over. I couldn't even get hep to the music. It's noisy and represents the most banal form of West Coast jazz. And while the saxophonist could keep up, the trumpeter had no idea of what the hell Dave Brubeck was up to at the piano with his fancy 5/4 time.Brubeck can't act either, though he's not pressed too hard in that regard -- one or two lines. McGoohan CAN act but he's playing a fast-talking hustler and con man here and that's not his strong suit -- not his FORTE, so to speak. He's best at slow, sly, deliberate lines delivered in a clipped voice with odd hesitations as if there are all kinds of wheels turning behind that utterance. Richard Attenborough can act too, but he doesn't put much effort into his role here. There is, after all, nothing to put much effort into.One notable property of this film. If it had been made in the USA, it would have been all about the happy marriage of a black man and a white woman. Racial epithets would have been hurled around. Charlie Mingus, author of "Beneath the Underdog," would have torn off his clothes on the bandstand and run around naked, shouting, "Oogoo Boogoo MAU MAU." But in this British movie, nothing is made of the mixed marriage. Nothing is made of race at all. Refreshing in a 1962 movie. It's not bad, in the sense that it's not insulting. It doesn't treat the audience as a horde of unkempt morons. It's just that it's so much less than engrossing.
insomnia
The first time I saw this film was when it came out in 1961. I didn't care then one iota that it was a modern day 'take' on Shakespeare's play: "Othello" Whatgrabbed me then was that it featured jazz musicians like Mingus, Brubeck, and Tubby Hayes, in a feature film. On a second viewing recently on late night T.V., I now believe the producers of this film should have left Shakespearian drama to Shakespearian actors. Though it was terrific to see and hear musicians likeHayes and Brubeck (man! those pearly whites he flashes at every availableopportunity!), I think it was a shame that a man like Charles Mingus (a musical genius and bass player without peer), was not featured more often.