A Terrible Beauty (film)

A Terrible Beauty (The Night Fighters)
U.S. poster
Directed by	Tay Garnett
Screenplay by	R. Wright Campbell
Based on	A Terrible Beauty 1958 novel by Arthur J. Roth
Produced by	Raymond Stross Robert Mitchum (uncredited)
Starring	Robert Mitchum Richard Harris Dan O'Herlihy Anne Heywood Cyril Cusack
Cinematography	Stephen Dade
Edited by	Peter Tanner
Music by	Cedric Thorpe Davie
Production companies	D.R.M. Productions, Inc.
Distributed by	United Artists
Release date	June 17, 1960 (1960-06-17)
Running time	90 minutes
Countries	United Kingdom United States
Language	English
Budget	£241,732[1]

A Terrible Beauty (also known as The Night Fighters) is a 1960 drama film directed by Tay Garnett and starring Robert Mitchum, Anne Heywood, Dan O'Herlihy and Richard Harris.^[2] It was adapted from a 1958 novel of the same name written by Arthur Roth.^[3] The film was an international co-production between Mitchum's production company, D.R.M., and that of producer Raymond Stross.

Dermot O'Neill is recruited into the Irish Republican Army (IRA) when a unit is formed in his Northern Ireland town during World War II. Reaction to the news is mixed; his mother is strongly against it while his father is proud. Dermot's brother Ned and sister Bella are ambivalent, but his girlfriend Neeve Donnelly ends their relationship, believing that the IRA will make a murderer of him.

Dermot and his friend Sean Reilly are selected to participate in a raid on a British armoury to steal weapons and ammunition. Don McGinnis is frustrated because, as commandant of the unit, he is too important to risk. The theft is executed perfectly.

However, their next attack, to destroy a guarded power plant in concert with a planned German invasion, results in bloodshed. In order to flee, Dermot shoots a soldier blocking the way out. Sean is wounded in the foot and Johnny Corrigan is killed. Dermot and Sean evade their pursuers and manage to cross the border to safety in the Irish Free State. Dermot returns home, leaving his friend to recuperate.

Despite Dermot's advice to avoid returning, Sean tries to sneak across the border and is captured by the police. Dermot wants to stage a rescue, but McGinnis rejects the idea. Sean is sentenced to ten years of imprisonment.

McGinnis wishes to exact revenge by attacking a police barracks. Dermot opposes this plan, as a policeman's wife and children are living there, and warns that he will inform the authorities if McGinnis does not change his mind. When McGinnis refuses to relent, Dermot tells him that he is quitting the IRA. He is beaten by IRA members, but he is saved when a police patrol arrives on the scene. Dermot executes his threat and informs the police, but without disclosing names. He is taken to stand trial as an informant.

Bella becomes concerned when her brother does not return home, so she finds Neeve and they consult Dermot's friend, a cobbler called Jimmy Hannafin, who believes that he knows what has happened. He recruits Ned to help in the rescue. Neeve refuses to be left behind, but Bella is sent home to reassure her parents. Once they find and free Dermot, guarded only by a youngster, Jimmy arranges for a friend to drive Dermot to Belfast, where he can leave the country with Neeve.

The IRA men begin searching for Dermot. McGinnis stations himself at the O'Neill home. In the darkness and driving rain, he mistakes Bella, who is wearing Dermot's coat, for Dermot and shoots her dead. He is horrified to discover that he has killed the woman whom he loves.

In a contemporary review for The New York Times, critic Eugene Archer wrote: "While the nature of the material invites a penetrating examination of the mental anguish implicit in an unresolved civil revolt, the writer has not attempted to explore it in depth, and has confined himself to a surprisingly strained and superficial treatment of the theme. As a result, the dramatic structure falters after establishing a promising situation in the early reels, and a brief lapse into unconvincing melodrama at the end seriously limits the film's modest pretensions."^[4]

• Film review at The New York Times
• A Terrible Beauty at IMDb
• The Night Fighters at the TCM Movie Database
• A Terrible Beauty at AllMovie
• The Night Fighters at the AFI Catalog of Feature Films