Wait Until Dark

1967,s Wait Until Dark works best when considered a tightly-wound and intensely effective thriller. It also contains what is widely thought of as one of the tensest and relentless climaxes in cinema which accumulate in a one of the greatest jump-out-of-your-seat moments, that needs to be experienced to be believed. The films premise revolves around Audrey Hepburn’s character Suzy, in a performance that would give her an Oscar nomination and finally prove to the sceptics that she was a brilliantly capable actress. Suzy lives in a basement flat with her husband, having recently been blinded in an accident and still trying to adjust to living her life in absolute darkness. The other components of the plot involve a doll full of heroin and three men who are determined to get it back, even if it means infiltrating the life and home of the blind Suzy and trying to bend her to their will. Once Suzy’s husband has left on business, the three men assume characters and take shifts in conducting a fake, elaborate scenario, slowly gaining Suzy’s trust and eventually terrifying her out of her mind in aid of one conclusion-to get the drug-filled doll that they believe Suzy has somewhere in her apartment. The leader of these men is the psychotic Mr Roat, played to creepy perfection by Alan Arkin, in a role Stephen King would go on to describe as the ‘greatest evocation of screen villainy ever.’ This claim is certainly not far off as the character is in equal parts quietly menacing, disarmingly funny and down right terrifying, especially in the final fifteen minutes when only himself and Suzy remain, in a locked room. The films climactic final minutes are relentless in their pace, Henry Mancini’s score tightening the tension constantly with ominous precision, the darkness slowly enveloping Suzy until we worry that there is no way out. 

 The majority of the film is set within Suzy’s basement apartment and we are constantly reminded of the vulnerability and hindrance her blindness causes her- the effect being both claustrophobic and disorientating as the audience vicariously share in her panic. Having recently seen a screening of wait until dark at the cinema, I can say that this is definitely a film that needs to be seen on the big screen to fully appreciate its brilliance. The effect of being in darkness with only the illuminated screen being a source of light, makes us share in the darkness of the apartment at the end of the film and puts us is the same position as the characters. We can only try and grasp what is happening when the light appears, a worrying sensation that probably adds to the infamously extreme reaction audiences had to Audrey’s showdown in the dark, both today and when it first came out.