MovieChat Forums > Night Must Fall (1937) Discussion > Help - A few questions (Spoiler)

Help - A few questions (Spoiler)


Why did Danny kill that first woman?

Why would he have kept her head?

Why did Olivia claim the box was hers? Besides the obvious saving his butt but why did she want to do that? Her wanting to learnt he truth of him first? The fact that she had feelings for him?

Anyone else laugh about the handcuffs?

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Yes, none of those questions are ever really answered. This is an effective movie in spite of a slack script. I don't know if the play is like this too, but the plot needed some tightening. On the other hand, the performances needed a shade more subtlety. Yeah, Olivia claiming the box was hers was supposed to be because she had conflicted feelings for him, but it never really came across as believable or fleshed-out, either in Russell's performance or in her chemistry with Montgomery.

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I am formerly known as HillieBoliday....Member since May 2006

There was no comparison between Danny and Olivia's suitor. What did she find even remotely romantic about Danny? It just didn't ring for me.....no attraction whatsoever that I could see. If anything, he was rather menacing and quietly threatening.

And....GOOD GRIEF! Who wouldn't detect the odor of a decomposing human head; even though it was hidden away in a hatbox in the back of the closet??!!

"OOhhhooo....I'M GON' TELL MAMA!"

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Having been news director at several small town radio stations, I have on several occasions reported on scene of a found body. The smell is unimaginable and the thought of a head in a hatbox NOT being discovered is unthinkable and if I may, that was the only part of the movie that "stinks"!

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Danny does blurt out his reasons for killing towards the end. He kills to remove other peoples' superiority over him.

Olivia does act irrationally when she claims the hat box to save Danny's crime coming to light. Danny seems to be right when he tells Olivia that she likes the danger of being with him, so her reasons are likely that she is a repressed woman who is fascinated by the danger that Danny presents.

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