Night Into Morning

A university teacher’s wife and son die in a fire. The man teaches at Berkeley. After the loss he tries to carry on with his life. But he turns to drink to hold himself together. The drink soon takes him somewhere worse. The tie between grief and habit is at the centre of the account. University life stands in the background of it. Loss, drink and the effort to pull himself together are all inside the one account. The film tells this with a strand of romance running through the drama. Ray Milland and John Hodiak take the leads, with Nancy Reagan, Lewis Stone and Jean Hagen also in the cast, in Fletcher Markle’s American film of 1951.