Wait until Dark will be on TCM this weekend. A very good film, with excellent acting. Audrey Hepburn plays a very plausible blind woman, being very plausibly terrified. But it is the character portrayals by the likes of Alan Arkin, Jack Weston, and Richard Crenna that really float my boat. The writing is also nice and crisp, and provides perhaps the best example of ‘show don’t tell’ in the trade.
Early in the movie, Alan Arkin’s creepy evil is revealed. But we don’t know about the characters played by Crenna and Weston. Both actors are likable, so we suspect maybe they might have some moral fiber. Maybe anti-heros. But we don’t know. Instead of expending yards and yards of film telling us about their character, the writer removes all doubt in just three short lines and one look. I paraphrase.
Crenna asks, “Do we have to hurt anybody?”
Arkin responds, “Do you care?”
Crenna answers, “No,” with a look on his face that says it really doesn’t matter to him at all.
With that one word, and that look, we know exactly what kind of men these are.