Movies are filled with heroics. Lucky losers manage to stop the bad guys, damsels in distress turn out to be badasses and the heroes of the world seem to have no limits.
“Wait Until Dark” is a movie that challenges our dependence on others for survival. It crafts suspense based on the protagonist’s limits and what she’s really capable of.
Adapted from a single room stage play by Frederick Knott, “Wait Until Dark” stars Audrey Hepburn as Suzy Hendrix, a blind woman highly dependent on her husband and her young neighbor for going about day to day activities, who is caught up in a ruse by gangsters wishing to take advantage of her disability. They suspect a doll filled with heroin has gone missing inside Suzy’s home, and they invent a story and sneak around her blindness to cajole her into turning it over.
The whole movie’s tension is built on perspective and how much Suzy can actually piece together. The criminals, played by a young Alan Arkin, Richard Crenna and Jack Weston, pull all the strings and lead her down a rabbit hole of lies to make Suzy believe her husband is in danger and might be responsible for the murder of a woman nearby their home. But the more she learns, the more she sees the cracks in their story. The criminals stealthily flash the blinds to a parked van outside, but she can hear better than they know. Arkin rushes into the room once as a crazed old man and again as the son trying to apologize, and Suzy detects the same squeak in his shoe.
It’s all wonderfully Hitchcockian in the vein of “Rope”, with MacGuffins and visual or sound cues galore that constantly tease us. In a way, we want the criminals’ story to succeed such that Suzy will be safe, and the more she learns the more she puts herself into danger. But we’re constantly rooting for her ability and her independence. The film never belabors the themes of her helplessness, but her limitations are a constant reminder.
Unfortunately the film is never as smart or as well put together as the best Hitchcocks. Roger Ebert wrote in his positive 1968 review that “Wait Until Dark” suffers from an idiot plot, in which Suzy never thinks to LOCK. THE. DOOR. or sends her only hope off to a bus station in Asbury Park to locate her husband rather than go straight to the police. The movie does actually make a few minor concessions as to why Suzy doesn’t do those things in the first place, but with just one guy guarding the door to her apartment and the phone line cut, the movie makes her out to be a lot more helpless than she probably is. At one point she gets a knife on her attacker but feels its useless once he manages to turn a light on. And everything as part of their fake story is an elaborate deux ex machina, explained in dense exposition that maybe makes for good theater but less great cinema.
“Wait Until Dark” comes alive in its doozy of a closing sequence, an exhilarating, horror thriller movie moment rather than just a suspense story. Darkening the frame and amping up the sadistic actions of Arkin’s crazed killer, Suzy and Arkin engage in a terrifying battle of the senses. Director Terence Young, the man behind the original James Bond movies “Dr. No,” “From Russia With Love” and “Thunderball,” has a terrific way with action, including a sinister low angle shot worthy of a scream.
Hepburn was nominated for an Oscar for playing a blind woman, and although far from her best work she’s a strong center to it. Best of all is Arkin, so unrecognizable as a young man and so capable of range and sadism. It wouldn’t be hard to find a smarter ’60s thriller than “Wait Until Dark,” but certainly don’t limit yourself.