Moontide
Moontide is a 1942 American drama film noir directed by Archie Mayo and Fritz Lang, although Lang was uncredited when the film was released. The screenplay was written by John OHara and Nunnally Johnson also uncredited and based on the novel written by Willard Robertson Moontide. The production features Jean Gabin, Ida Lupino, Thomas Mitchell and Claude Rains.
When the film was first released, Bosley Crowther, film critic for The New York Times, questioned the direction of the film, especially its focus on actor Jean Gabin, writing, But all of them need much more than a vague and irresolute script, much more than synthetic scenery and manufactured moods. Director Archie Mayo hasnt brought them into contact with real life. He has expended most of his energy in bringing the audience into contact with Mr. Gabin. And Moontide is too heavy a burden to be carried entirely by him, even though he is Charles Boyer from the other side of the railroad tracks.More recently, film critic Dave Kehr writing for the same New York newspaper wrote, Moontide, ... provides an illuminating link to one of the frequently overlooked sources of noir the movement known as poetic realism, which flourished in France from the mid1930s until the onslaught of war ... a rootless, harddrinking French sailor, Bobo Gabin, achieves a tentative domesticity operating a bait shack with Anna Ida Lupino, a waif he has rescued from a suicide attempt. The story is so much in the foggy, claustrophobic, doomladen spirit of poetic realism that at times it seems almost a parody of it. Fate is present in the form of Tiny Thomas Mitchell, a blackmailer with knowledge of a murder that Bobo might have committed. A kindlier metaphysical force is represented by Claude Rains, playing a waterfront philosopher with the unfortunate name Nutsy. ........
Source: Wikipedia
