shoots first, sending Max falling to his death. When Max first arrives at Joe's shabby boarding house room, he demands that he leave Jo Ann alone. In the ensuing argument Joe pushes Max halfway out of the window but cannot bring himself to kill his rival. Max observes that it is not so easy to kill a man, and shows Joe the pistol he brought with the intention of shooting him. Max, who has always been pretentiously snobbish, begins to taunt Joe. He tells him that he thinks Joe is beneath him, and then begins to insinuate that he and Jo Ann had a sexual relationship. Joe becomes enraged and shoots Max. Police are about to smoke him out with tear gas when Jo Ann arrives. She manages to talk Joe into giving himself up, promising to wait for him if he is sent away to prison. Joe had considered himself friendless, but most of the assembled crowd, including Joe's coworker and neighbor Bill Pulanski, and Frank Dunlap, a blind man who lives in the neighborhood, support him. Cast Henry Fonda as Joe Adams Barbara Bel Geddes as Jo Ann Vincent Price as Maximilian Ann Dvorak as Charlene Howard Freeman as Sheriff Ned Meade Moroni Olsen as Chief of Police Elisha Cook Jr. as Frank Dunlap Queenie Smith as Mrs. Tully David Clarke as Bill Pulanski Charles McGraw as Policeman Stevens Patty King as Peggy Production When RKO acquired the distribution rights to Le jour se lève in preparation for remaking it as The Long Night, they also sought to buy up all available prints of the original film and destroy them. For a time, it was thought that the French film had been lost completely, but copies of it re-appeared in the 1950s and its classic status was re-established. The score for the film makes extensive use of the famous Allegretto second movement of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony. Reception Box office According to Variety, the film earned less than $1 million at the box office. The film recorded a loss of $1 million. Critical response A Life magazine review at the time blamed "Hollywood commercialism and the stultifying institution of censorship" for the film's poor quality, noting that, "because anything having to do with incest is banned from U.S. films by censors and because Hollywood considers sad endings unprofitable, a moving and mature tragedy has been remade into melodramatic goulash."