"Night Unto Night" was made in 1947 and was not released until 1949. That is a very bad sign...a sign that the studio thought they had a bomb on their hands. While I would not call this one a bomb, it certainly could have been a lot better...and it's a shame because the acting is really nice in this one...particularly by Ronald Reagan in the lead.When the film begins, John (Reagan) moves to the Florida coast and finds a home to rent. A widow (Viveca Linfors) wants to leave her home...and not for the usual reasons. She thinks the place is haunted and she hears her dead husband's voice there! John thinks this is nutty but is a gentle man and treats her well despite her odd delusion. Eventually the pair fall in love...but he has a secret he broods over...he has epilepsy.The acting and production values are really nice in this one but the film acted like epilepsy is some sort of death sentence...or at least a life destroyer! It certainly isn't and handling the illness this way seemed pretty crass and silly. Overall, some nice moments but the plot just didn't make a lot of sense...and marrying a man who occasionally goes blank (which happens with many types of seizures) is NOT something that destroys your life or makes you destined to be a lonely recluse! The writing sinks this one....and it's a shame as Reagan is at his best in this one. And, I wonder how epileptics felt when they watched this film...as if they were somehow destined for hollow lives because of the disorder!

"Night Unto Night" is by no means outstanding, but is not the bottom of the barrel effort that some reviewers have claimed. It is a serious attempt to portray two serious personal problems.The first is the difficult task of coming to grips with the death of a spouse; the husband of Vivica Lindfors' character has been killed in the war (WWII). The second is having to face a serious medical condition; Reagan's character, a scientist, suffers from epilepsy.The pace of the film is, to say the least, leisurely. The climax, which comes during a Florida hurricane, finally provides a bit of action. The acting is good throughout. Reagan's performance is competent if not outstanding. Vivica Lindfors and Broderick Crawford are better.The attitude toward epilepsy was somewhat different in 1949 from what it is today, and one sees that portrayed in this film. (I believe that the symptoms displayed by Reagan's character are not accurate.) "Night Unto Night" was produced with the best of intentions, but the final product does not live up to expectations. It is, however, worth at least one viewing.

***SPOILERS*** Extremely deep and heavy stuff directed by Don Siegel who's known for his shoot em up police flicks like "Madigan" and "Dirty Harry". It's here where Siegel directs the kind of movie that you would have expected the famed Swedish director Ingmar Bergman to do.The films title "Night Unto Night" even sounds like an Ingmar Bergman movie but that's where the similarities, between Siegel and Bergman, ends. In the movie Bio-Chemist John Galen, Ronald Reagan, is looking for a place to stay, on the Florida East Coast, to conduct his experiments on bacteriological agents to improve the healing powers of penicillin. Staying at Ann Gracy's, Viceca Linfors, almost empty mansion John soon comes to realize that Ann is a bit off center in her insisting that she communicates, verbally, with her dead husband Bill. John being a man of science knows that the dead can't communicate with anyone but keeps that fact from Ann in order not to ether embarrass or hurt her feelings. It's when John comes in contact with C.L Shawn, Broderick Crawford, an artist as well as deep thinker whom he considerer's to be in full control of his mental faculties that his opinion about Ann starts to change. Shawn sees nothing strange at all in the existence of ghosts and unfamiliar spirits that John feels is nothing but pure unadulterated BS!Ann soon falls in love with John, a life long bachelor, but he doesn't seem that interested in her because it, having an affair with Ann, will interfere with his scientific research. It's then that the cat is let out of the bag in John's very strange and bizarre behavior. It soon comes out that John is suffering from a severe case of epilepsy and is trying, in the Florida sunshine, live with the disease. John's epilepsy according to the doctors treating it-Dr. Pool(Art Baker) from his hometown of Chicago and Dr. Altheim (Erskine Sanford) from here in Florida-is getting worse by the day and will eventually render him useless as a man of science or anything else!It's later when Ann gets the news, from Shawn, about John's condition that she does everything to get him to overcome the stigma, back then in the 1940's, of being an hopeless epileptic. It's when Ann's jealous sister Lisa, Osa Massen, who's also crazy about John, and whom John earlier rejected, insults and humiliates John, in front of Ann among others, about his condition that he tried to keep secret that he went into, what seemed like, an epileptic seizure. Hurt and ashamed about being exposed, as an epileptic, John goes into his room planing to end it all by blowing, with a .45 caliber revolver, his brains out.***SPOILER ALERT*** As it turned out it was Ann who came to Johns aid and, by threatening to kill herself, kept him from committing suicide. John looked at things, like the scientist that he was, as being either black or white without any grays in between. It was both Ann as well as Shawn who believed in things beyond science, like life surviving death, that made John see the light that always eluded him. It also made John realize that even though his illness, epilepsy, was not curable faith in a higher power as well as the whole hearted support of those who love him will do a lot more for him then all of medical science put together.

NIGHT UNTO NIGHT ('49) struggles to be a message film with something important to say about life and love--and does carry an unusual theme. However, despite the dramatic intensity in the performance of Swedish actress VIVECA LINDFORS (who looks radiant in all of her close-ups), no one else in the cast seems to be in the same picture. RONALD REAGAN seems to be sleepwalking through a role he clearly doesn't comprehend, displaying none of the emotional fireworks that Lindfors is capable of. He makes any notion of chemistry with Lindfors seem absurd. A stronger actor might have brought some credibility to his role of a botanist who keeps a dark secret from the woman he loves. And unfortunately, the supporting roles are too colorless to add much to the proceedings. BRODERICK CRAWFORD is cast inexplicably as an artist in touch with "the truth" and OSSA MASSEN is a bit over the top in her drunken stupor as the jealous sister who reveals Reagan's dark secret to Lindfors at the height of a thunderstorm.Could have been so much better with a tighter script and more emotional response from Reagan, but this is clearly not one of his better films at WB. Technically, the storm is a stunning sequence--too bad it isn't supporting a better script. Reagan redeemed himself later with some better roles at his home studio but this is clearly a dud.