Fog Over Frisco (1934)

This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

People are voting emotionally.

Far from Perfect, Far from Terrible

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

"Fog over Frisco" is a pretty good yarn but the plot could have been stronger. The narrative feels a bit murky and the ending was rushed. Various aspects of the story don't quite gell and it left me feeling frustrated. Bette Davis being killed off early and being billed first in the cast, is a risky thing to do. After all, a film largely rests on the shoulders of the leading actor. Davis is the one to watch when she is in the film and a lot more effective than Lindsay or Woods. Alan Hale is good as the police officer. The final solution comes as no surprise whatever and I was disappointed with it. Bette Davis is the black sheep in her wealthy family as she is mixed up with a local gang in stolen bonds. She is a feisty, care-free character who doesn't immediately know that she is in over her head. It makes a welcome change to actually see a film made where it is based. San Francisco was used extensively throughout shooting and gives "Fog over Frisco" some added scale. Then again, "Warner Bros" didn't need to have generous budgets in order to make great films. An interesting film but flawed.

I'm always amazed at how many plots and sub-plots writers were able to inject into films that lasted little more than an hour. FOG OVER FRISCO (the title always reminds me as suitable for a Charlie Chan flick), moves at a fast pace, has some well developed characters, and the plot about a missing society girl (BETTE DAVIS) and her half-sister (MARGARET LINDSAY) is involving from start to finish.*****POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD***** Davis looks terrific at 25 (the same year she played her breakthrough role in OF HUMAN BONDAGE). She moves with all the skill of an actress sure of her authority as a bad girl on the screen. Unfortunately for the viewer, her character gets killed off midway through which leaves it up to Lindsay and bland DONALD COOK to carry the rest of the film.They do manage to keep the plot spinning along nicely toward a fast and furious conclusion involving the kidnapping of Lindsay and the rescue efforts of all concerned. ROBERT BARRAT is an interesting figure as an eavesdropping butler who turns out to be a Secret Service man on the trail of a gang of gangsters led by IRVING PICHEL. Pichel has an interesting screen presence and would later become a director.Neat little mystery/suspense film is directed in fine form by William Dieterle.Trivia note: This is my 3,000th review at IMDb! This will be a wrap for awhile now that I've reached that goal.

If anyone out there is looking for Shakespeare or Ingmar Bergman, then this is NOT the film for you. FOG OVER FRISCO is not exactly "high art" and yet is quite thrilling and fun--just the sort of gangster film that Warner Brothers did best during the 1930s. So, naturally the film is sensationalistic, action-packed and a tad scandalous! Bette Davis (at her radiant best) is a rich girl who thrives on excitement and danger. Despite being very comfortable, she has a yearning for self-destruction and seems on a collision course with disaster, as she frequents dives, runs around with gangsters and steals security bonds for the excitement of it! So, it's hardly surprising that eventually she disappears and the police are called in to sort out the mystery.The first portion of the film which features Davis in the lead is actually NOT the best aspect of the film. I love seeing her on film, but the film really heats up when her step-sister and a hot-shot reporter investigate. Then, the film accelerates into high gear and is non-stop action and suspense.All in all, this is a great film for those who just want to turn off their brains and have fun.

FOG OVER FRISCO is getting some interesting comparisons to the work of Alfred Hitchcock, most notably his film PSYCHO. While it can be said that there are some similarities with the sisters where one of them winds up on the wrong side of the tracks and the other gets the unwanted role of having to find out what happened to her, this is where similarities end. Hitchcock wanted to shock the audiences with his story and led us to believe that Janet Leigh, already an established star, would survive the story to the last reel. Yes, there was the element of money her character had taken, the same way Davis' character also gets involved in a plot to steal some securities (I think I have it right, I vaguely recall it being "money in stock form"), but in 1934 Davis was just one of many contract players wading through the mire of these quickies that Warner's was giving her. When her character meets her own fate in FOG OVER FRISCO, it's not a shock. It's actually closer to being expected: she's too crude during her short screen time and there is an uncomfortable scene at a dinner table that makes her character unlikeable.Concealing the identity of the murderer also seems to be another point of comparison in between this movie and Hitchcock's classic. Again -- I believe this is an assumption: being a taut crime drama with a good (if clumsy) note of suspense, the need to leave the audience hanging is an old a trick as time itself. I doubt Hitchcock would have even learned about this movie since his inspiration was the book itself which was a loose account of the Ed Gein murders. If he did see this film, no one will ever know, but I personally believe Hitchcock did not use FOG OVER FRISCO even as a vague point of reference. Perhaps the fact that the movie looks different from a cinematic point of view -- it seems to be experimenting with how to transition from one scene to the next, something that only film noir, Orson Welles, and Hitchcock would engage in during the 1940s onwards. At least, it gave Margaret Lindsay a chance to carry the movie on her own since she tended to play the supporting role and would be Davis' rival in JEZEBEL.