Noir Cinema: Moontide

Gabin and Lupino shine as star-crossed lovers in an imperfect masterpiece.

Jean Gabin and Ida Lupino built careers for themselves playing haunted, tormented individuals, not least of which their starring turns in prototype film noirs including, respectively, Port of Shadows and High Sierra. The two teamed in 1942 for the downbeat romantic drama Moontide, another precursor to the genre that even its DVD making-of featurette diplomatically calls “ill-starred.” With a script that underwent intense sanitizing to meet the era’s rigid censorship standards and a switch in directors, along with friction between Gabin and the studio, it’s a wonder anything coherent resulted at all.

Yet the final film, though problematic and troubled in many ways, builds such pathos and depth that ultimately it becomes an unforgettable, if not entirely perfect (and sometimes frustrating) viewing experience. By no means a classic film, it’s so close you may be tempted to think more of it than it truly deserves, even though it deserves a lot.

The premise is tailor-made for late night viewing: Bobo (Gabin) a longshoreman and blackout drunk, prepares to leave the ramshackle California harbor town of San Pablo in search of more lucrative work. Bobo’s friend Tiny (Thomas Mitchell) has something lined up in San Francisco, apparently another job in which Bobo does all the work and the venal, lazy Tiny collects part of his wages as a “fee.” Bobo is blase and nonchalant, and spends their last night in town cavorting with a prostitute before embarking on an epic drunk that leaves him, the next morning, absent his memory and working on the dilapidated bait barge run by one of his fellow partiers (Chester Gan.) Bobo learns a local drunk was choked to death the night before, and that for reasons unremembered he’s wearing the victim’s hat.

Abandoning the job almost at once, while walking along the beach with drinking buddy Nutsy (Claude Rains), Bobo saves waitress Anna (Lupino) from drowning herself in the surf, even lying to the police to prevent her arrest. The two take the girl back to the bait barge, where she and Bobo begin a tenuous romance, full of hesitation and self-doubt. Locked in the tiny quarters, the two literally circle one another, their different kinds of cynicism flashing out whenever they feel threatened by the other. In time they begin running the bait shop together, slowly fixing it up and making a home for themselves, of sorts, away from the rest of the world.

If you’ve ever seen a movie before, you know that kind of peaceful isolation can’t last. The investigation into the murder continues in the background, while Tiny grows increasingly anxious and belligerent in demanding Bobo abandon the barge and head north. Bobo attempts to scare Tiny away with force but finds himself trying to explain his sometimes-explosive temper to Anna. He avoids her company at night, too, ostensibly to keep their relationship proper but with hints of some greater need for evasion working on his motives. On their wedding day, he abandons her again in order to fix the engine of a rich doctor’s yacht, leaving Anna at the mercy of a vengeful Tiny. As the DVD jacket copy promises, only one will survive, and the murderer’s true identity will come to light.

For however well it’s acted and at times perfectly visualized, most of the film’s problems come from adapting Willard Robertson’s novel into something compatible with Hayes Office standards. Anna’s backstory, including years of poverty and a rape, is all but erased from the final script. Lupino, superb actress that she was, manages to communicate the grief and crushed hopes with which such troubles have burdened her, but the story still suffers for their absence. Anna’s return to vitality under Bobo’s care is heartbreaking to watch, both to think of the character’s past and to fear for her future, thanks completely to her peformance.

Elsewhere a palpable homoerotic subtext runs through Tiny’s and Bobo’s relationship, and to a lesser degree the encounters Nutsy has with the other men as well; the locker room scene, in which Tiny slaps him around with a wet towel, is particularly hard to ignore for its metaphorical freight. Much has been made in other reviews (possibly too much) about the possibly homosexual relationship Tiny and Bobo may share.  It’s a hard element to mistake, but there are other, larger themes at work that, too, get just too little exploration or development to reach their potential.

Gabin and Lupino’s natural chemistry fuels their romance onscreen, but as with Anna there isn’t enough done to explain Bobo’s restlessness. Despite Nutsy’s witty comparisons between living as a “gypsy” and a “peasant,” the script doesn’t offer much explanation besides his own carefree attitude, which seems given the stakes of the plot sometimes inadequate. Gabin has a great monologue in which he reveals the earlier mistake that allows Tiny to dictate his actions, and the scene hints at self-loathing and sorrow that Bobo possibly carries as consequence. It also hints at the violence that, in its way, unites the two, and shows Anna’s growing strength and confidence, illustrating the mutual need the two share.

If only those scenes had room to breathe, or flex their muscles. For however romantic the fog-smothered, lonely barge can seem under Charles G. Clarke’s Oscar-nominated cinematography, the setting also at times feels limiting. You want Bobo and Anna, for a variety of reasons, to simply enjoy a night on whatever town San Pablo can offer them. Partly this was a matter of logistics and staging. The onset of World War II limited the film’s production capabilities, cancelling on-location shoots for the more artificial locales of a soundstage. Yet those limitations work to amplify the gauzy artificiality of the characters’ world and intensify Clark’s moody aesthetic. Fritz Lang had originally agreed to direct the picture, but quit two weeks into shooting following friction with the recalcitrant Gabin. Veteran director Archie Mayo (The Petrified Forest) took over, but the exterior shots carry a distinct Lang sensibility, especially in the climactic scene in which a murderous Bobo stalks Tiny along the seawall. That conclusion, however, again carries the mark of the era’s standards and practices, so that it’s ultimately less than totally satisfying.

Regarding the supporting performances, Rains is excellent as always, even if his sage drunk character is somewhat stock. Mitchell, best known for his role as Scarlett O’Hara’s father in Gone With the Wind, is chilling as the barely restrained, almost reptilian petty criminal Tiny. His confrontation with Anna, itself a thinly disguised (once again for the benefit of the censors) attempt at sexual assault, is nerve-wracking.

The film’s ending, changed completely from the downbeat conclusion of the book, offers a sense of completion and happiness to Bobo and Anna’s lost souls you were hoping they’d get all along their lonely ordeal. Moontide is not a perfect movie, but for two characters this sympathetic you’ll find yourself wiling to believe all’s well that ends well.

Moontide is available on DVD as part of 20th Century Fox’s “Fox Film Noir” library of titles.

- Michael Kabel

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Night Flights, May 2010 Edition

Our regular reviews are like entrees. This recurring feature is like the sampler plate. 

And this month we start our gallery of night-themed movie posters

There are literally more movies already made than there exists time to watch them. That’s even true – in some ways more so - if you’re insomniac and rely on movies to help lull you to sleep. Movie channels, especially our favorites Turner Classic Movies and Fox Movie Channel, show films virtually around the clock, all year long. Most of their programming is worth watching, too, and a good chunk of it is, for us anyway, pretty much irresistable. 

The happy consequence of all this plenty is that we also see more movies than we have time to write about. This recurring feature offers smaller-sized reviews and commentary on films we saw that, for one reason another, didn’t get a full blog posting. The opinions are our own, of course. They may differ from yours. That’s okay. 

Journey Into Fear (1943) - One of the lesser-known efforts from Orson Welles’ Mercury Theatre collaborators, this espionage drama casts Joseph Cotten as an American advisor to the Turkish Navy marked for death by a Nazi spy (Eustace Wyatt) and his henchman (Jack Moss). A Turkish police chief (Welles) puts the panicked American onto a tramp steamer crossing the Black Sea between Istanbul and Georgia, but the enemy agents follow him aboard, stalking out his movements. 

Directing credit is given to Norman Foster, but the Welles touch is ever present, especially in the sumptuous ennui of an early scene set within an Istanbul nightclub. Cotten also wrote the script, adapting it from Eric Ambler’s novel, giving him his only screenwriting credit. The film itself ultimately plays not as well as it could, and often drags despite its brief 68-minute run time. Still, fans of Welles’ early work, or of exotic film noirs such as The Mask of Demitrios or The Shanghai Gesture, will most likely want to check it out. 

Junior Bonner (1972) – Another minor entry in the careers of all involved, Sam Peckinpah’s first team up with Steve McQueen displays a family of rodeo riders approaching the end of their era. Favorite son J.R. (McQueen) is a former but unbowed bull riding champion in the mold of his legendary father Ace (Robert Preston), while younger brother Curly (Joe Don Baker) has plans to convert the family ranch into a housing community. Ace, long past any of his primes, has plans to mine for silver in Australia, even though matriarch Elvira (Ida Lupino) has left him in frustration and impatience. 

Peckinpah works the films themes of family loyalty and encroaching commercialization of the West so subtly it’s sometimes hard to see the text for the implied subtext. The director never seems to nail the pace or the texture of Jeb Rosebrook’s relaxed screenplay, with an unfortunate lack of drama left for the audience to absorb. In the end, the payoff with its too-pat conclusion and treacly sentimentality feels almost smug. Preston and Lupino are both wonderful, however, giving lived-in and understated performances. 

Richard Pryor Live On the Sunset Strip (1982) – Representing something of a comeback following his well-publicized self-immolation, this concert film shows Pryor actually and triumphantly at the height of his legendary craft. Merging his observational humor with a series of one-man, one-act character performances, his monologues and diatribes – always funny and acerbic, but often surprisingly reflective and melancholy, as well – show the comic’s gift for understanding human nature. 

Pryor’s legacy has been over-simplified by modern audiences, who too often remember his scathing vulgarity but not the smart rhythmic and observational purposes lying within it. Seeing this film again reminds us of his versatility, including his gift for nuanced and intelligent storytelling. The following clip is aggressively NSFW. 

 

In Country (1989) – Adapted from Bobbie Ann Mason’s period-classic novel, Norman Jewison’s disappointing film nevertheless contains several impressive performances but gets hampered by a miscast lead and TV movie-of-the-week pacing and texture. Kentucky teenager Samantha Hughes (Emily Lloyd) longs to connect with the memory of her father, a soldier killed in Vietnam years before. All the men of her town, including her roommate and uncle Emmett (Bruce Willis), bear scars psychic and physical from their war service but won’t discuss them. Her mother (Joan Allen) isn’t talking either, especially since Emmett’s behavior grows increasingly erratic by the day. 

Arriving near the end of the decade’s brief mania for Vietnam reconciliation, the movie skims the surface of its material thanks to often clumsy pacing and a weird mid-plot set piece that goes nowhere. Willis gained serious critical notice for his subdued turn as the war-scarred loner, yet the film rises and falls on Lloyd’s coming-of-age performance. Unfortunately she’s too earnest by half, and seems distanced and at times uninterested in the story’s setting and context. The novel was a good read that deserved better. 

The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) – Author James M. Cain’s thriller novels provided the source material for a trio of classic film noirs, including Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce and this slow burning erotica starring James Garfield and Lana Turner. Garfield’s the drifter who falls to the elusive charms of the unhappily married Turner, and the two conspire to kill her husband (Cecil Kellaway) to gain control of the roadside diner he’s managed with cold-hearted miserliness. Of course the murder doesn’t go as planned, and a shrewd district attorney (Leon Ames) begins circling the doomed lovers. 

Director Tay Garnett (Bataan) can’t match the edgy cynicism of Billy Wilder’s spin on Double Indemnity or Curtiz’s posh, jaded take on Mildred Pierce. As a result the film walks when it could saunter, with an undercooked and procedural pace that sometimes works against the palpable chemistry of its stars. Ames, who judging by his filmography didn’t sleep in the late 1940s, is reliably upright as the DA who knows something is up; more entertaining still is Hume Cronyn, playing against his screen image as a shifty, amoral defense attorney who masterminds his clients’ acquittals despite them. Overall, however, it’s themes and barely restrained sexuality make it archetypal film noir, among the best examples of its genre. 

We’ll be back next week with our review of Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood. Thanks for reading.

- Michael Kabel

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Night Flights: March 2010 Edition

Condensed reviews of movies we stayed up too late to watch.

The days are getting longer and we’re not going to bed any earlier. Movie networks like Turner Classic Movies and Fox Movie Channel continue to show stuff that catches our interest, even while the DVR makes watching them way, way too convenient. Movie channels run day and night, which means even the good ones – especially the good ones – sooner or later get down to the off-the-beaten-path works that, more often than not, feel like uncovered treasure. At least, they do for us.

The following are five movies we recorded, stayed up late checking out, and the next day felt both groggy, happy, and guilty all at the same time for indulging ourselves. Any of them rate a blog post of their own, and time willing we’ll get around to giving them the attention they deserve.

The Seal Wolf (1941): For pedigree, you really can’t do much better than this: Michael Curtiz directs John Garfield, Ida Lupino, and Edward G. Robinson in a big budget adaptation of Jack London’s underrated proto-existentialist novel. Curtiz takes a damp, gritty approach to the doomed voyage of the seal hunting vessel Ghost and its desperate crew, led by manically evil captain Wolf Larsen (Robinson). Garfield plays  a fugitive whose sense of dignity won’t let him kowtow to Larsen’s caprices, while Lupino plays an escaped convict rescued (if that’s the right word) after a shipwreck.

Curtiz nails the foggy menace that surrounds the ship and the souls of its passengers, and Robinson and Garfield both polish their screen intensities to a white-hot edge. You can almost see the acrimonious sparks jumping between them. Also giving memorable, even haunting performances are Gene Lockhart as the ship’s rummy doctor given one last glimmer of redemption and Barry Fitzgerald (The Naked City) as a vile ship’s cook and turncoat informer. Only Alexander Knox disappoints, blandly portraying an author mesmerized by Larsen’s feral intelligence. Ultimately, the film is hampered somewhat by odd transitions and a plot that could stand to linger on its ideas a little longer, but the total result is nonetheless completely satisfying. Curtiz would return to the foggy textures and doomed, redemptive romance in his next effort – Casablanca.

Out of the Fog (1941): Released just three months later, Out of the Fog reteamed Garfield and Lupino while covering much of the same philosophical ground in a vastly different situation. Jonah (Thomas Mitchell) and Olaf (John Qualen) are meek, working class Brooklyn drones who escape the drudgery of their day-to-day lives (one’s a tailor, the other a short-order cook) by fishing in Sheepshead Bay from their modest rowboat. Jonah’s daughter Stella (Lupino) dreams of a more exciting life than her impending marriage to a local working stiff (Eddie Albert) promises; those dreams seem briefly close to fruition when she’s romanced by a gangster (Garfield) who’s come to the neighborhood to graft protection money from the local boat owners. Except he’s also extorting money from Jonah and Olaf, forcing the timid men to contemplate killing him to protect Stella and themselves.

Based on a play by Irwin Shaw, the film’s pervasive New Deal flavor of populism – “Ordinary people can love like millionaires or poets,” Jonah tells Stella – today comes across kind of dated and vaguely patronizing. Still, Garfield and Lupino’s chemistry is as sharp here as in The Sea Wolf, and the acting is impeccable all around, especially in the achingly vivid performances by Mitchell and Qualen.

Rebel Without A Cause (1955): It’s a film we’ve heard about all our lives and one we suspect is considered a classic by millions, but we’ll just say we don’t join in that opinion. The narrative wanders, characters are never really fleshed out beyond their positions in the script, and the ending is anything but satisfying or even conclusive. Directed by the semi-notorious Nicholas Ray (In A Lonely Place), the film seems to have something to say but, like its trio of over-indulged protagonists, can’t quite figure out what that is or why it might be worth saying. Maybe that was the point, but we don’t think so.

Nevertheless, it’s almost impossible to watch Dean’s performance - cool, deliberate, odd – and not recognize the influence it played on dozens of leading men that followed him, both immediately after his death and in the next several decades to come. Conversely, Natalie Wood’s blank, spoiled stare and girlish energy don’t suit her emotionally conflicted character, and Sal Mineo’s performance fails to capture the menace that the script suggests lurks just beneath his character’s milquetoast veneer, even while grasping at its confused sexuality. Overall, the film represents an interesting period piece, as far as that goes, but not a work worthy of its lasting popular stature.

Cutter’s Way (1981): If Rebel Without A Cause arrived at the peak of its era, the ennui and dissolution of Cutter’s Way represents the one drink too many at the ”who’s kidding who” party that was 70s American cinema. The trio of outsiders at its center – a gigolo, his bitter Vietnam vet friend and conscience, and the dissolute woman they both love – understand that something’s passing them by, even if, like the angsty teens of Rebel, they’ll be damned if they know what to do about it. Bone (Jeff Bridges ) witnesses the dumping of a dead body after hustling the bored housewives of Santa Barbara high society. When he thinks he recognizes the murderer the next day – one of the community’s most powerful oil tycoons, no less – his buddy Cutter (John Heard) devises a scheme to both blackmail the culprit and turn him in to the cops. Unless you’ve never seen a movie before, you’ve already figured out nothing goes as intended.

In the years since its release the film has borne comparisons to Chinatown, and given the trio of broken people at its center and the suburban California setting, it’s hard not to imagine what Robert Towne would have done with such a premise. Instead, director Ivan Passer leaves too many of the ambiguities in Jeffrey Alan Fiskin’s script (adapted by a novel by Newton Thornburg) unaddressed and unfocused, so that the final result isn’t the masterpiece that its best moments imply it could become. Of the performances, Heard is brilliant as the maimed veteran that understands the fences around the distant mansions are meant to keep him out, while Lisa Eichhorn is positively haunting as his doomed but devoted wife. Bridges, fresh off Heaven’s Gate, here began a flirtation with neo-noir that would last for half the decade (Against All Odds, 8 Million Ways To Die) but has seldom caught his interest since.

Transformers (2007): Friends have suggested we watch Michael Bay’s paean to Turtle Wax more than once, not for the acting, story, or script but rather just to watch “shit blowing up real good.” (We live in the South.) Look, we just gushed about a seventy year old seafaring adventure, so alien robots folding themselves into monster trucks and fighter jets probably isn’t going to naturally pique our curiosity. (On the other hand, we do love comic book movies, so maybe our friends thought the film stood an even chance.)

We promised in our mission statement to judge these kind of movies fairly and without condescension but man, there’s a limit. The film can barely stand up to viewing, let alone serious consideration. It’s an aggressively stupid pile of red state pandering that feels interminable when you’re watching any part of it but the admittedly enthralling fight scenes. They are the movie’s lone strength, but there’s not enough of them strung out along the almost 2 1/2 hour runtime to sustain interest.

What it does have in abundance is limp, broad comedy starring Shia LaBeouf and some actually rather tepid vamping by former-It Girl Megan Fox. The worst part is that we’re told the sequel “isn’t as good.” We can only imagine what that kind of weapons grade anti-quality that must entail.

That’s it for this week. We’ll be back next week with – finally – some reviews of current movies and DVD’s, and then another edition of our always-popular Miscellaneous Debris right after that. Thanks for reading.

- Michael Kabel

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Miscellaneous Debris, September 2009 Edition

A round up of news, rumors and opinions at the edge of the fall season.

September’s pretty much over, and the whole industry greets the coming of autumn and winter not with cooler temperatures but with meatballs. Lots and lots and meatballs. Once again a CGI spectacle rules over adult-oriented films like The Informant! and Surrogates, even while the rest of the Top 10 looks like a scrap heap. The coming months at least bring a few intriguing films: the Gerard Butler-Jamie Foxx ne0 noir Law Abiding Citizen, the perfect storm of hipsterness Where The Wilid Things Are, the Coen Brother’s A Serious Man, and dozens of others. So there’s light at the end of the tunnel, even as the days grow shorter.

The following few news items are a miscellany of observations and opinions we’ve built up over the last month. The opinions are our own, though you’re welcome to discuss.

Does it still happen if no one's watching?

1. As far as box office goes, September was notable not for what made money but for what didn’t: Jennifer’s Body, the double flash-in-the-pan teaming of Megan Fox and Diablo Cody, was dead on arrival despite a saturating media campaign. Meanwhile the Jennifer Aniston romantic drama Love Happens (which we like to call Pointless In Seattle) also went nowhere, even in a year in which other romances like The Proposal and (500) Days of Summer have exceeded box office expectations.

We think the lesson to be learned is pretty simple: people are bored, and ready for something new and fresh. Aniston and Fox are both overexposed, though Proposal star Sandra Bullock isn’t. The public won’t pay money to see faces they see too much already, for free, on magazine covers.

2. We bitched some about the season premiere of Mad Men, but the show has gotten substantially better with each episode, and the last couple especially can stand with the best of the series. Watching the Sterling-Cooper ad agency unravel from within is a suprisingly gut-wrenching process, even as Don and Betty Draper (Jon Hamm and January Jones) seem to prepare themselves to finally go their separate ways. Cheers also for bringing back Draper’s nemesis Duck Philips, played so well by Mark Moses.

As last night’s episode, “Seven Twenty Three,” was the halfway point of the seasons, we’ll risk predicting that by season’s end both Peggy Olson (Elizabeth Moss) and Don Draper have left Sterling Cooper, either by choice or through firing. We also hope there’s some resolution to Joan Halloway’s flailing marriage, though we can’t help but see domestic violence on the horizon.

Jon and Kate plus hate.

3. Has reality television finally, at long last, neared its tipping point? Scandals such as the murder mystery surrounding VH1′s Megan Wants A Millionaire and the ongoing tabloid marketing scheme that is the Gosselin’s marriage seem to be the kind of negative-buzz generating backlash events that signal the end of a trend. We hope so. In roughly a decade the advent of “reality” based television has rearranged the television landscape, and largely for the worse. As the major networks grow increasingly desperate, quality programming has fled to some cable networks, while other cable channels, such as VH1 and especially TLC, cater to a lower denominator than was even thought to exist ten years ago. Television does not have to be a vast wasteland, the efforts of most reality programming to the contrary. Enough already.

4. One potential bright light for network scripted drama arrived last week in the form of Flash Forward, the ABC sci-fi drama adapted from Robert J. Sawyer’s novel by David Goyer (The Dark Knight) and Brannon Braga (Star Trek: Enterprise). The Goyer-directed pilot was a long way from perfect, lacking as it did the confidence and effortlessness that accompanied previous landmark debuts such as ER and Lost to the screen. We’re also not sure about star Joseph Fiennes’ ability to center the somewhat expansive cast, which includes Courtney B. Vance, John Cho, Jack Davenport, Dominic Monaghan, and Gabrielle Union.

Still, the premise – everyone on Earth gets a 137-second glimpse of their near future, six months hence - is intriguing enough to earn our loyalty for two or three episodes, by which time the show will have probably found its sea legs or not. Ratings for the debut were solid, meaning the show’s fortunes now depend on word of mouth. If not, hpefully ABC will show the series more patience than it extended to other sci-fi fare like Invasion and Life On Mars, neither of which we imagine carried Flash Forward’ s hefty payroll.

Yo ho, yo ho hum: Depp

5. In what must be the answer to a question nobody asked, Disney is moving forward with a fourth installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, this time with or without Johnny Depp’s involvement. Depp is reportedly aware the second and third Pirates movies lacked quite a bit in quality, and wants script approval after former Disney studio chief Dick Cook resigned last week.

Just so this doesn’t go unsaid, Depp’s post-Jack Sparrow career is nothing to crow about: Secret Window, Public Enemies, and Charlie and The Chocolate Factory are nobody’s idea of classic cinema, and the upcoming Alice In Wonderland looks like standard Tim Burton weirdness. Depp might do well to get out the eyeliner once again.

Gong Li in Shanghai

6. A rare highlight of the last Pirates film was Chow Yun-Fat’s appearance as pirate warlord Sao Feng. The long delayed Shanghai, in which Chow co-stars with John Cusack and Gong Li, has been delayed yet again, this time looking at a release sometime next year. Directed by Mikael Hafstrom (1408) and featuring Ken Watanabe and Jeffrey Dean Morgan, the saga of an ill-fated romance in the months leading to the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor seems a treat for older film audiences, offering the kind of film spectacle Hollywood rarely attempts anymore. So why the delay?

7. Finally, we forgot to mention While The City Sleeps in our recent list of movies watched while under the influence of DVR-enabled cinematic insomnia. If you’re a fan of classic cinema, Fritz Lang, movies about newspapers, Ida Lupino, and/or lurid trash, this film has something for you. Basically, its sprawling plot follows the staff of a major newspaper as its department heads race to outdo each other pursuing “the Lipstick Killer,” a freudian nightmare of a serial killer preying on women who live alone.

Lang directs the 1956 film with a kind of dreamlike detachment, keeping the characters in close proximity to one another even as they never really establish meaningful contact, even when intimate. The always-underrated Dana Andrews plays the television commentator leading the hunt for the killer, with Vincent Price, film noir siren Rhonda Fleming, and John Drew Barrymore also swirling around the tangle of events. Part film noir, part melodrama, and part Hollywood ensemble piece, it’s a weird mixture that doesn’t come off as well as it should, yet still remains completely, if cheaply, entertaining.

UPDATE: We’ll be back Monday. Thanks for reading.

- Michael Kabel
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