Middle of the Night (1959)

Directed by Delbert Mann. Starring Fredric March, Kim Novak, Albert Dekker, Glenda Farrell, Lee Grant, Martin Balsam, Edith Meiser, Lee Phillips.

Dreary, indecisive drama of a May-December romance between a young divorcée (Novak) and a widower (March) more than twice her age. Delbert Mann is all elbows with this material, unwilling to reshape Paddy Chayekfsky’s screen treatment (the scribe also penned the stage play) into something less mundane, less dripping with so much sincerity it curdles—mixed in with George Bassman’s intrusive score, the intensity of the trysts and scorn turns soggy. March and Novak are incompatible even for an age-gap plot; they strain for their heavier emotions, and look uncomfortable onscreen together, unable to sell a number of overwritten passages of declamatory dialogue. Inelegant in its manner of skirting censors for controversial themes for the period, it could have used a few rays of sunlight, a few jokes, something to make the pairing seem less forced by a dramatist’s hand. Originally a television playhouse production at half the length, also directed by Mann.

44/100