Night People (20th Century-Fox). Razzle-dazzle, the art of hitting them where they ain't, has helped many a runt to make a winning score. This picture is a case in point. When Writer-Producer-Director Nunnally Johnson started his play, there was nothing very surprising in it: it was the safe old Berlin thriller-chase routine about an East zone kidnaping and West zone attempts to recover the fumble. But then Johnson started to call some fancy signals.
The first surprise: a spectacular but somewhat deceptive shift to the left. When a U.S. soldier is kidnaped, his father (Broderick Crawford),...