1972's "Endless Night" was the final chapter in the career of screenwriter Sidney Gilliat, a Hitchcock collaborator on "The Lady Vanishes" and "Jamaica Inn," and the last of 14 projects that he actually directed. Teamed for a third time are former Disney starlet Hayley Mills and Hywel Bennett, coming off his bawdy hit "Percy," cast as they were in "The Family Way," a newlywed couple just beginning their lives together. This being an adaptation of one of Agatha Christie's last novels (issued in 1967), things kick off with Bennett's Michael Rogers narrating his dramatic story from the confines of an institution, a doctor eager to get to the bottom of a mystery that proves to be confounding to the viewer long after the picture ends. A small time drifter with grandiose dreams of one day living at his favorite location on the Welsh coast, a magnificent hillside overlooking the sea called 'Gipsy's Acre,' where Michael first encounters Hayley Mills as American Fenella Thomsen joyously dancing in front of his admiring camera; they hit it off quickly then meet again in a few weeks, by which time he learns that this beautiful, orphaned girl is the '6th wealthiest person in the world,' with a grasping family of busybodies eager to buy him off once the two elope to be wed. Despite the cryptic warnings of a dour old woman, Michael's lavish dream house is built at 'Gipsy's Acre' by his friend, renowned architect Rudolf Santonix (Per Oscarsson), who himself is clearly infatuated with the bride, known as 'Ellie' to her friends. George Sanders makes a welcome appearance as family solicitor Andrew Lippincott, a more humorous buttress for the groom than her immediate family, a disapproving stepmother (Lois Maxwell), flippant stepfather (Peter Bowles), and German tutor Greta (Britt Ekland), whom Ellie adores yet everyone else shuns due to her overbearing nature. Childhood flashbacks reveal our narrator as a wannabe actor with daddy issues, whose own mother doesn't trust him; Michael seemingly has everything a man could want plus a loving wife as well, but when 'some are born to endless night,' darkness is predestined to reign over this sunny landscape (Hayley Mills is so captivating that we do fear for her safety). The hillside location was actually the Isle of Wight, all house interiors an indoor set, shooting in June and July 1971 but not released for over a year, after the suicide of an ailing George Sanders. His role is unfortunately brief, followed by two more in Peter Sasdy's "Doomwatch" and Don Sharp's "Psychomania," fearing hints of dementia in his old age and signing off in fitting fashion with a suicide note proclaiming, "I am leaving because I am bored."
Review of Endless Night
