By all accounts a kind and cultured individual in real life, Edgar G. Robinson had a face made for cinematic villainy. It helped to make him a star in 1931's gangster sensation Little Caesar. It also limited his options, making his casting as the tortured psychic in John Farrow's 1948 noir so potent: he may look devilish, but he's the exact opposite.
When Robinson's John Triton was younger, he had a psychic act with his fiancée, Jenny (Virginia Bruce), and their friend, Whitney (Jerome Cowan), in which they would travel from town to town dazzling audiences with revelations that often proved true — much like the couple in 1949's Nightmare Alley, even if they're mostly just educated guesses. After years on the road, though, Triton starts to have premonitions that prove unerring—and unsettling—in their accuracy. If his newfound ability helps Whitney, a gambler, to make money on the ponies, it also allows Triton to see that marriage to Jenny may do her more harm than good, so one night he disappears without a trace. Whitney, who will make a fortune in the oil business, thanks to a tip from Triton, goes on to marry Jenny, but she dies in childbirth.
Twenty years later, John seeks out Jean (Gail Russell, the melancholy beauty from Moonrise) to warn her that Whitney's life is in danger. When the oilman dies in a plane crash, Jean realizes that Triton isn't just some weirdo that her parents used to know. She also stands to inherit a fortune, but when Triton's other predictions come true, the police close in on him, convinced he's only trying to gain the heiress's trust to rob her blind.
On the contrary, John serves as an antecedent for Johnny Smith, the anti-hero of Stephen King's The Dead Zone, as his power comes to feel more like a curse than a blessing. Even though he only uses it for good, non-believers see him as dangerous. Co-writers Barré Lyndon and Jonathan Latimer took rewarding liberties with Cornel Woolrich's novel by making Triton the central character, and it seems likely that Stephen King was familiar with their work since his unwitting psychic meets a similar fate.
Though Night Has a Thousand Eyes wouldn't prove as successful as The Big Clock, Farrow's other 1948 noir, it has a sensitivity that many films of its genre lack, owing largely to Robinson's subtle, yet touching turn as a man genuinely trying to make the best out of an unwelcome situation. Though Farrow's film presupposes that precognition exists, a notion some viewers may find dubious, he adeptly depicts the terrible loneliness that can come from seeing the world in a way no one else can. As Triton puts it, "I'd become a sort of reverse zombie. I was living in a world already dead, and I alone know it."
Imogen Sara Smith's stellar commentary track covers the careers of all the principal players, including Russell and Woolrich, who lived lives even more dramatic than those they depicted. Highly recommended for classic film collections and film noir library programming.