The Big Night (1951)
Directed by Joseph Losey · Cinematography by Hal Mohr
Approved75 min34 frames
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Stills, screencaps & shots from The Big Night
16 of 34 frames — the full set is searchable by lighting, lens, shot size, color and mood with a free account.
What is The Big Night about?
A young man zigzags through the sordid vortex of downtown Los Angeles while seeking vengeance on the man that beat his father.
The Big Night is a 1951 American film noir directed by Joseph Losey and starring Preston Foster, Joan Lorring and John Drew Barrymore in his first starring role. The film is based on a script written by Joseph Losey and Stanley Ellin, based on Ellin's 1948 novel Dreadful Summit. Hugo Butler and Ring Lardner Jr. also contributed to the screenplay, but both men were admitted communists, and following Lardner's conviction for contempt of Congress, they were uncredited when the film was first released.
Second paragraph from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Where can you watch The Big Night?
US availability for The Big Night (1951). Data by JustWatch, listings on TMDB. Availability changes — check the provider for current listings.
Who stars in The Big Night?
Who made The Big Night?
What does the cinematography of The Big Night look like?
Across 34 sampled frames, The Big Night builds its coverage from medium shots, with close-ups carrying much of the rest. Cinematographer Hal Mohr keeps almost all of it in soft, low-key light. Most of the frames play at night or in the failing light of dusk. Vintage glass shapes the frame. Focus stays shallow in most of the frames, isolating subjects from their surroundings. The production design places the film in the 1940s.
What is the color palette of The Big Night?
The dominant colors across the sampled frames of The Big Night (1951) are #030303, #cbcbcb, #909090, #303030, #6b6b6b, #464646 — measured from the per-frame color data FrameThrower extracts for every film.
#030303#cbcbcb#909090#303030#6b6b6b#464646
See the full The Big Night colour palette — every hex with its share, plus warmth, saturation and luminance.
A reference database for filmmakers
FrameThrower is a fully machine-searchable film database and visual reference library — all 34 frames of The Big Night (1951), and 5,000+ films besides, indexed frame by frame and readable by AI. Search it in plain language, from a reference image, or by colour; call it from an API, an MCP server or an SDK. It's the reference layer for making the next movie.
Techniques in this film
More films by Joseph Losey
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