Wealthy jazz fan Rod (Richard Attenborough) hosts a jazz party to celebrate the one-year wedding anniversary of black bandleader Rex (Paul Harris) and white jazz singer Delia (Marti Stevens). Playing at the party are leading jazz performers of the day, including Dave Brubeck, Charles Mingus, John Dankworth, and Tubby Hayes.
Rex's drummer Johnny (Patrick McGoohan) has ambitions of becoming a bandleader, with Delia as the orchestra's female singer. To achieve this, he must break up Delia's marriage to Rex, which he attempts by insinuating to Rex that Delia is having an affair with Cass (Keith Michell), a sax player in Rex's band.
Because it is a movie, Johnny's scheme works so well that Rex assaults both Delia and Cass, almost killing them. But through the miracle of cinema, Rex is reconciled with Delia and Cass instead of getting arrested, while Johnny is ostracized into playing the drums for an audience of none.
How others will see it. All Night Long will always be of interest to jazz fans, including what is presumably the only filmed duet between pianist Brubeck and bassist Mingus. I suppose there are cinemaphiles who seek out adaptations of Shakespeare plays into different cultures and time periods (something that Akira Kurosawa did best), but they might be disappointed that the ending departs from "Othello" in that nobody gets killed.
Today at imdb.com, All Night Long has a respectable user rating of 7.1 out of 10. The user vote total of 1600 is low, yet higher than, for example, McGoohan's preceding film Two Living, One Dead (1961), which has only 80 user votes.
The user reviews are mostly positive. The playing of the famous jazz musicians alone makes the film worthwhile for many viewers, and the presence of British film stars Attenborough and McGoohan contributes further to the appeal. Some disparage the film's too-hip lingo, and others see the drama as heavy-handed, perhaps even absurd.
How I felt about it. Attenborough has only a supporting role, but he is a remarkable actor with a mesmerizing presence. The other actors, though, ham it up, especially McGoohan and Michell. They turn what is theoretically a drama with weird vibes into a comedy that also teaches us how not to behave at a party.
This 1962 movie could not have been made in America at that time, because interracial marriages were not only taboo, but illegal in many states, particularly Southern states where Jim Crow was long in effect. It was not until the 1967 Supreme Court decision of Loving vs. Virginia that the state anti-miscegenation laws were struck down.
Thus, All Night Long had no chance of playing in theaters in America. But it didn't need to, as its audience was British. The movie gave work to screenwriter Paul Jarrico and actress Betsy Blair, both of whom were blacklisted in America for supposed ties to the Communist Party.
All Night Long is really two movies, with the jazz party short in support of the Othello adaptation. The film must be graded on the latter instead of the former, but it proves to be much better than it should be, probably it is too strange to be taken seriously as a drama.
Rex nearly strangles Delia, but not enough to harm her, and throws Cass off a staircase, which is not high enough to kill him. Both forgive Rex, no one calls the police, and jittery Johnny's punishment for all the trouble he has caused is that he is left alone to play the drums in the dark.