How can I explain what I don't understand myself?
The rare film noir that's a remake of a film made in the country where the term was coined, 1947's The Long Night retains the complex flashback structure and fatalistic atmosphere of Marcel Carné's Le jour se lève, which starred Jean Gabin and Arletty as would-be lovers torn apart by the machinations of an older man who wishes to possess her. Here the young lovers are Joe (Henry Fonda), a war veteran who works at a steel factory, and Jo Ann (Barbara Bel Geddes), an orphan who works at a nursery, and the older man who comes between them is a smooth-talking magician named Maximilian the Great (Vincent Price in peak form). Just as Le jour se lève did, The Long Night opens with the interloper getting shot and promptly dying, at which point Joe holes up inside his fourth-floor apartment and spends the night brooding in the dark after police snipers shoot out his lights.
Rather than straighten out the timeline, screenwriter John Wexley and director Anatole Litvak have most of the action play out in the past, including one part that has a flashback within a flashback. Naturally, Joe starts with the first time he met Jo Ann, whose plight he can relate to since he was also an orphan, then jumps forward to when he found out about her curious connection with Maximilian. To hear her tell it, though, it's not as sordid as Maximilian and his ex-assistant Charlie (Ann Dvorak) make it out to be, especially since the gray-haired magician plays off on the fact that he's old enough to be her father by telling Joe that he is. This is bullshit, of course, but after a point Joe is so mixed up he doesn't know what or who is on the level. As for Maximilian, he's the kind of fellow who doesn't know to quit while he's ahead, which is how he essentially talks himself to death. Whether that was his intention, it certainly was the result.