Moontide (1942)

terrible... so disappointed.

disgusting, overrated, pointless

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Moontide is directed by Archie Mayo and adapted to screenplay by John O'Hara from the novel written by Willard Robertson. Its stars Jean Gabin, Ida Lupino, Thomas Mitchell and Claude Rains. Music is by David Buttolph and Cyril J. Mockridge, with cinematography by Charles G. Clarke.Sometimes weird, sometimes wonderful, but also wasteful, Moontide is a choppy experience. Hindered by production code strong arming and Fritz Lang and Lucien Ballard leaving the initial production, there's an over whelming feeling of what might have been. Story finds Gabin as Bobo, a salty sailor type living and working at the quayside, he likes a drink and after one particularly boozy night he wakes to think he may have killed somebody. Inconvenient since a troubled lady he helped has started to impact greatly on his life.Pilot Fish Pondering.Story is absorbing by way of the characters, around Bobo is Tiny (Mitchell), who is a leech by way of having a hold over Bobo. Then there's Nutsy (Rains), who not as his name suggests, is something of an intellectual, while Anna (Lupino) has attempted suicide and on whose appearance sets in motion a chain of dramatic events. All characters operate in and around the waterside, rubbing shoulders with various unseemly types, and it's this setting, with the tech craft on show, that grips from the get go.Most scenes are filtered through film noir lenses, with mists constant, dim lights prominent, and the glistening of the water belies the darker edges in the play. A drunken hallucinogenic dream is Dali in effect, which is one of a number of strange scenes throughout, of which one is where we find the bizarre sight of Tiny whipping Nutsy in the shower! Certain touchy things are inferred delicately, and conversations are never less than attention holding. If only the plot wasn't so erratic, with so many infuriatingly dangled carrots, then we could have had a higher end proto noir to savour.Splendidly performed, though, with Mitchell and Lupino not playing to their usual types, and the visuals a real treat for the so inclined of noirish persuasion (Clarke was Oscar Nominated for his work), giving us just enough to have a good time with. Still can't help hankering for Lang and Ballard though... 6.5/10

This film may not be a masterpiece when paralleled with other films by Fritz Lang, as well as other projects starring Jean Gabin, and also films in which Ida Lupino excels. ( "Road House", with Richard Widmark and Celeste Holm). As well as the wonderfully sinister "Ladies in Retirement", in my opinion one of Ms. Lupino's most brilliant performances. But give this film a chance, it has a few redeeming performances and interesting scenarios.Ida Lupino is believable as Anna, a down on her luck waitress who attempts suicide. Apparently in the 1940's police used to arrest suicides, rather than help them. Gabin helps Lupino out of the problem, and she helps him decorate his ramshackle cabin on the docks of San Pablo, California. They eventually marry.Claude Rains has a rather odd role as "Nutsy", a barfly and friend, and Tom Mitchell is "Tiny", the requisite villain.While the theme is a bit sketchy, the sets are interesting, if a bit improvised, and the film is an oddity worth seeing for Lupino. Of course, I may be a bit biased. 8/10.

Though the movie is so-so story-wise, Jean Gabin's performance hooks you. It's the little things -- like his gestures to Tiny in the bar asking for money -- that blew me away. The movie itself has problems. The ending feels tacked on (I understand it was changed from the original downer ending). Some scenes feel like they are missing just a tad bit of exposition for them to really feel complete (the Doctor, for example, or Anna's back story). And I think Thomas Mitchell was miscast as Tiny -- he seems more blustery than malevolent (thw towel snapping came across as boyish pranksterism than cruelty). But I'd watch it again just to study Gabin.

John O'Hara (1905 - 1970) was the finest American Short Story writer of the 20th century and one of the finest novelists. Virtually all of his novels were best-sellers but of the four (Butterfield 8, A Rage To Live, From The Terrace, Ten North Frederick) adapted for the screen only the latter - which won the National Book Award - was anything like satisfactory, whilst Pal Joey - adapted initially by O'Hara himself into the Book of a Broadway Musical with words and music by Rodgers and Hart, from his collection of stories written for The New Yorker - which appeared in an emasculated version of the Broadway musical in 1957 was a major hit mainly due to Frank Sinatra as the eponymous Joey Evans. Like most writers who came to prominence in the thirties O'Hara had several spells in Hollywood and though he only received a sole screenplay credit twice - this film and The Best Things In Life Are Free - he drew on his time there for some of his finest short stories, one Novella, Hope Of Heaven, and one novel, The Big Laugh. Fox paid him $1,250 a week to adapt Willard Robertson's novel for the screen and he worked on it from May through July of 1941.What emerged was a mixture of several elements; San Pablo an inlet in Southern California is Steinbeck country and its denizens are akin to those inhabiting Cannery Row but without the humour; top-billed French star Jean Gabin enjoyed one of his biggest successes in the Carne-Prevert Quai des Brumes, also set in a foggy port and involving violent death, and there's also something of Irwin Shaw's The Gentle People about it (After O'Hara Shaw was the second finest American short story writer of the 20th century but he wrote The Gentle People as a stage play).Lawyer-turned-actor Robertson appeared in more than 100 movies but put pen to paper only three times and Moontide was his only novel. It's a simple premise; gentle giant Bobo (Gabin), a drifter, is prone to getting drunk and blacking out and relies on 'minder' Thomas Mitchell, to keep him out of trouble and find him work (shades of Lennie and George in Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men). In the past he had strangled a man (a nod to La Bete Humaine, another Gabin movie) and Mitchell was privy to this and uses it as a lever to live off Gabin's labour. In the first reel a minor character, Pop Kelly, is strangled whilst Bobo is drunk and Mitchell allows him to fear the worst. The fly in the ointment is Anna (Ida Lupino) who Bobo rescues when she tries to drown herself. They fall in love, marry, and Mitchell attempts to destroy them. Robertson wrote a realistically tragic ending but Fox weren't buying that for birdseed in 1941 so it's a case of all's well that ends well as two dysfunctional people find hope in the haven of a bait-shack on the California coast. All O'Hara fans will want to see it but probably not all of them will enjoy it.