It Happened All Night (1960) User Reviews

After hours .

[ulicknormanowen · 7/10 · 29 October 2020]

Christine Gouze-Rénal was the first important woman producer in France ; the star of "l'affaire d'une nuit " was none other than her husband ,Roger Hanin ;and as she also produced Brigitte Bardot's films,it was only natural that she made a small guest star appearance as herself.The short sequence is revealing :the characters are in awe: is it really HER? At the time ,BB was at the peak of her fame .

"L'affaire d 'une nuit" is a pleasant comedy, aided by such brilliant screenwriters as Jean Aurenche and Henri Jeanson :when Antoine (Pierre Mondy) feels nostalgic for his military service in Algeria, Jeanson's lines are ironical : an anti-militarist , he could not praise army life,particularly in 1960,when the Algeria war was not over .

Antoine and Michel(Roger Hanin) were schoolmates , and they were nicknamed "Castor and Pollux" ; they meet by chance in a café ;Antoine is an oafish man , whose sexy wife (Pascale Petit) in tow seems to be bored stiff .Michel is not keen on becoming friends again with his former pal but when the latter leaves , he offers the young wife to drive her back home:it's the beginning of a love affair which will last only one (eventful) night .

Both lovers take the cuckold for an idiot,and ,to explain the unfaithful night, they invent far-fetched stories, but the husband ,when he welcomes them with a sullen face, is no longer the man who can be easily fooled; with an open razor and the drive through the Bois De Boulogne , the comedy almost turns thriller.

Well acted by the three principals ; OK direction by Henri Verneuil who gives the people what they want : an entertaing movie for Saturday night; and he effortlessly pulls it off .

Lots of location footage around Paris

[robinakaaly · 11 February 2012]

I wanted this one as part of my Brigitte Bardot collection, though she only has a very short, uncredited, scene irrelevant to the plot. Along the Right Bank, man A buys a bird in a cage for his wife. He then meets up with a school friend, B, he hasn't seen for years, who has a beautiful wife, C (the young Pascale Petit). After a drink in a café, A drives B and C to a manif militaire in the Champs Élysées which B wants to attend. A then offers to drive C to her home in St Cloud, even though he lives at Nation, but she asks to be taken to another location. A thinks she might be meeting a lover, hangs around, and when she comes out, picks her up and they go off to spend the day together. A tells his wife he is at meetings, C says B never gets home until late after his manifs. After shopping, wining and dining, avoiding a cheap hotel, finding her home a bit fraught, they head off into the country for an al fresco encounter. Since she never takes her tights off, one assumes nothing actually happened (though in those days films left a lot to the imagination). After breakfast by the Gare St Lazare, A returns C home pretending he has been looking after her after an attempted assault. B is shaving himself with a cutthroat, which worries A, but it becomes apparent that this is not the first time C has come home in a compromising position. A drives B to Gare de Lyon where the latter takes the train to Marseilles to get away from C, leaving B in an awkward position vis à vis both his wife, the bird in the cage and the bird at St Cloud. All very French and dubious, but the location settings around Paris were as I remembered them.