Moontide (1942)
Directed by Archie Mayo, Fritz Lang

Film Review

Jean Gabin's dreams of a brilliant career in Hollywood floundered at the first attempt with this quirky mix of melodrama and film noir thriller, a stylistic oddity which struggled to find an audience on both sides of the Atlantic.  With its patently artificial dockside setting and sparse narrative, Moontide is an atmospheric minimalist drama which is strongly evocative of the poetic realist films that Gabin had made in France in the late 1930s, films such as Marcel Carné's Le Quai des brumes (1938) and Jean Grémillon's Remorques (1941).  The similarity may have been even stronger if the director who was originally assigned to the film, Fritz Lang, had got his way.

Lang had conceived a much grimmer film but studio boss Darryl F. Zanuck was having none of this and insisted on lightening the tone of the film.  Lang walked off the project and was replaced with Archie Mayo, a capable director but not one who has anything like Lang's visual flair and innate sense of drama.  Moontide may be described as 'poetic realist lite' - the mood and setting are classic Carné, but the story makes too many concessions to Hollywood convention and feels like a botched castration job.  The characters are not allowed to be as ambiguous and multi-faceted as they would be in a French film of this period - the difference between good and evil must be more clearly delineated.  The good must be rewarded, the bad must be punished.  And of course the ending has to be upbeat.  With all these constraints dumped on the poor screenwriters, it is hardly surprising that the film offers few, if any, surprises.

Moontide would be an easy film to dislike were it not for the charm and conviction that the four principal actors bring to their performances.  Gabin is as captivating as ever, even when he is visibly struggling with a language that is not his own.  Ida Lupino is perfectly suited to play opposite the earthy Gabin and rarely in her career did she have the impact that she has here, totally beguiling as the 'lost woman' who appears to be reborn by her first taste of real happiness.  As ever, Claude Rains can be relied upon to bring a touch of class to the proceedings, the well-mannered voice of reason in a world that is forever teetering on the edge of anarchy.  Thomas Mitchell injects the requisite note of menace into the drama, thoroughly chilling in the film's climactic scene.

The misty dockside set adds to the film's claustrophobic atmosphere but the accompanying staginess does take away some of the drama.  With more imaginative lighting and direction this flaw could have been better hidden, but these too are sadly lacking.  It is the quality of the acting, and very little else, that redeems Moontide, making it a compelling and subtly poignant variant on an all too familiar theme.  When it was first released, the critics were not kind to it and the film was inevitably a spectacular flop.  Today, it is easier to appreciate its strengths and forgive its many shortcomings.  Moontide is no masterpiece but it is an engaging little film, an impossible hybrid of French poetic realism and classic Hollywood melodrama.  There really is nothing like it.

Film Synopsis

Bobo, a drifter of French origin, arrives in San Pablo, California looking for work.  After a night of heavy drinking, he wakes up to find himself on a barge belonging to a Japanese fish bait merchant, Hirota.  When he hears that an old sailor named Pop Kelly was strangled to death the previous night, Bobo fears that he may have killed the man in a drunken stupor.  His so-called friend Tiny draws the same conclusion and intends to use this to extort money from him.  Bobo accepts Hirota's offer of a job and begins a love affair with a young woman, Anna, he saved from the police after she attempted suicide.  The couple agree to get married but on their wedding day Bobo is called away to repair a pleasure boat.  Alone, Anna receives an unwelcome visit from Tiny and discovers he is far more dangerous than he appears...