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Durée	65 minutes
Année de sortie	1 janvier 1926
Genre	Horror
Pays	- United States
Box-office	1 004 000,00 $US
Budget	151 666,00 $US
Réalisation	Tod Browning
Scénario	Waldemar Young, Tod Browning, Joseph Farnham
Photographie	Merritt B. Gerstad
Montage	Harry Reynolds
Musique	Robert Israel
Production	Irving Thalberg

Présentation

London After Midnight (original working title: The Hypnotist) is a lost 1927 American silent mystery horror film directed and co-produced by Tod Browning and starring Lon Chaney, with Marceline Day, Conrad Nagel, Henry B. Walthall and Polly Moran. The film was distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and was written by Waldemar Young, based on the story "The Hypnotist" which was written by Browning. Merritt B. Gerstad was the cinematographer, and the sets were designed by Cedric Gibbons and Arnold Gillespie. Harry Sharrock was the assistant director. The film cost $151,666.14 to produce, and grossed $1,004,000. Chaney's real-life make-up case can be seen in the last scene of the film sitting on a table, the only time it ever appeared in a movie. Browning remade the film as a talkie in 1935, as Mark of the Vampire, starring Bela Lugosi.

The last known copy of the film was destroyed in the 1965 MGM vault fire, along with hundreds of other rare early films, making it for decades one of the most sought-after lost films of the silent era. Film historians William K. Everson and David Bradley both claim they saw the film in the early 1950s, and an MGM vault inventory from 1955 shows the print being stored at that time in Vault #7.

Historian Jon C. Mirsalis commented "Despite all the mythology and excitement over the film, all indications are that it would be a disappointment if uncovered today. Both Everson and Bradley admit that the film was inferior to Mark of the Vampire. The critics of the time were likewise lukewarm, and even Chaney's performance got less than the usual enthusiastic reviews. The eerie sets, and Chaney's stunning vampire make-up, make for intriguing still photographs, but these scenes account for only a small portion of the film, the rest of the footage being devoted to Polly Moran's comic relief, and talkie passages between detective Chaney and Walthall. Perhaps it is a film that is viewed with more reverence than it deserves simply because it is no longer available for study."

In 2002, Turner Classic Movies aired a reconstructed version, produced by Rick Schmidlin, using the original script and numerous film stills to recreate the original plot.

Bande-annonce

Synopsis

Roger Balfour is found dead in his London home one night. Burke, a representative of Scotland Yard, after questioning everyone present, declares the death a suicide despite objection from Balfour's neighbour and close friend, Sir James Hamlin.

Five years later, the Hamlin residents witness strange lights within the now-forsaken Balfour mansion before realising the new tenants to be two vampiric figures of a man in a beaver-felt top hat with long hair and sharp teeth, and a silent pale woman wearing long robes. This prompts the baronet, Sir James, to call Burke in once again who discovers that Hamlin and the others there (Balfour's daughter, Lucille, his butler, Williams, and Hamlin's nephew, Arthur Hibbs) had been the only other persons in the Balfour home when he died. After noticing the new lease to the Balfour mansion bears the exact same signature as the deceased Roger Balfour's, Burke remains skeptical about the existence of the undead, and, along with Sir James, exhumes Roger Balfour's tomb to find it empty. After a series of grisly events; from the maid Miss Smithson's eccentric recollection of encountering the Man in the Beaver Hat manifesting in a bedroom, to the vampire girl flying down like a bat from the ceiling of the Balfour mansion, and witnessing the living corpse of Roger Balfour, Burke reveals to Lucille that he believes her father to have been murdered.

After taking the precaution to protect Lucille's bedroom from vampires, the girl is taken to the Balfour mansion. As Sir James is instructed to venture to the mansion, he encounters the Man in the Beaver Hat (revealed to be Burke) and is hypnotised into thinking it is five years earlier. Within the mansion, the events leading up to Balfour's death are recreated and re-enacted and all secretly watch as Sir James kills Roger Balfour and fakes his suicide so as to ultimately marry Balfour's daughter Lucille, against the deceased's will. Once apprehended, Burke lifts the trance and identifies Sir James as the killer.

Distribution

Numéros d'identification

• IMDb ID (tt0018097)
• Letterboxd film ID (london-after-midnight)

Sources

• en.wikipedia.org - CC-BY-SA 3.0

Cryptozoology - 13 novembre 2022