Out of the Fog (1941)

Just perfect...

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

Out of the Fog is directed by Anatole Litvak and collectively adapted to screenplay by Robert Macaulay, Robert Rosen and Jerry Wald from the play The Gentle People written by Irwin Shaw. It stars John Garfield, Ida Lupino, Thomas Mitchell, John Qualen and Eddie Albert. Music is by Heinz Roemheld and cinematography by James Wong Howe. The Brooklyn wharf-side is the setting for this melodrama tinted with noirish themes and players. The area is Sheepshead Bay and the local citizens are a gathering of people stuck in a rut they seem incapable of getting out of. Old gentlemen dreamers planning to buy a big boat and sail off to sunnier climes, the local lovely who's in a dull relationship with a dullard – who craves for something more spicy. Other patrons of Sheepshead just while away the hours playing cards in the local restaurant - that's the peak of their excitement, and others are just slaves to the grindstone. Then there's Jacob Goff (Garfield), a chiseller and racketeer, a man who stomps around the wharf like the cock of the hen-house, gathering protection money or casually setting fire to the boats of anyone who dares not to pay their dues… There's a wonderfully atmospheric feel to Out of the Fog, due to the claustrophobic setting of the story and Wong Howe's moody photography. Characterisations are enhanced by some well versed scripting that puts lyrical dialogue into the mouths of the principal players. Goff is the archetypal charming rogue, with a killer smile and sexy danger oozing from his pores, it's no wonder that frustrated Stella Goodwin (Lupino) spies an opportunity to escape her humdrum existence. Hell! Goff even does card tricks. But of course he is a sort of devil in disguise, or fascism in disguise as it happens, and as he tips the lives upside down of the Sheepshead residents, it brings threats and violence to this once quiet little waterfront. 1941 was a key year for film noir, with the likes of The Maltese Falcon and I Wake Up Screaming lighting the touch paper of a film making style that would burn brightly for the next 20 years. Out of the Fog has made its may into some noir publications, which is understandable given the essence of the story and the presence of noir legends Lupino and Garfield, but it's not what I would call essential film noir by some margin. However, it's a comfortable recommendation to like minded noirphiles regardless. 7/10

Jonah (Thomas Mitchell) and Olaf (John Qualen) are two poor, hard-working men who share a love of fishing and have both bought a half-share in a boat that allows them to follow their passion each night. However, they are bullied by Goff (John Garfield) into paying him protection money against the burning of their boat. Things get worse as Goff starts to date Jonah's daughter, Stella (Ida Lupino) and then demands all of Jonah's savings. The fisherman decide to fight back....This is a fun film to watch but it's a shame that it is played so much for comedy. It would have been far more effective if the fisherman played it straight. As it stands, the cast let down the proceedings apart from John Garfield and Thomas Mitchell. Garfield is excellent as the man we hate and Mitchell gives a realistic performance of a man who doesn't want trouble. He gives his character some depth as he holds information back from his daughter and tries to stand up against Garfield's character. At the other extreme are John Qualen and Ida Lupino. Qualen is sooooooo frustrating and such an annoying character that you will want to slap his head and Lupino is wasted as I know that she can do so much better. Her character also wasn't really involved and I think this was a waste of time for her standards of performance. It is maybe the fault of the script as ultimately, she, too, just frustrates.There are humorous moments, eg, when Jonah and Olaf are on the boat with Goff and Jonah keeps yelling out the signal for Olaf to make his move. The scene would fit perfectly into any comedy film and it is genuinely funny. Unfortunately, what Olaf does next highlights exactly why this film is a disappointment. Overall, the film is OK despite some wasted talent on show.

This odd little film effectively weds comedy and drama and works in practice in a way that you'd never believe if someone just laid out the plot for you on paper.John Garfield takes some chances here with his fan base as he plays a very one-dimensional hood, Goff, who goes for the easy pickings. Rather than go to the big city where he would most probably have to contend with gangsters rougher and smarter than himself, he moves in on a fishing community and chooses to shake down the peace-loving and gentle populace.Thomas Mitchell and John Qualen play pals Jonah Goodwin and Olaf Johnson, who live for the nights they go fishing - they both have day jobs. They comprise most of the comedy and the most touching parts of the drama as they gradually come to realize that the law won't help them get the ruffian Goff out of their lives, and they may just have to take action themselves. With someone like Goff, there is only one action that will work - murder.Ida Lupino plays a rather one-dimensional character herself - Jonah Goodwin's daughter Stella - and as such she is just made for Goff, whom she desperately wants on any terms regardless of what he is doing to her own father. She finds existence in the fishing village boring and is looking for a way out when Goff comes along and sweeps her off her feet by dazzling her with dollars and his devil-may-care attitude. I have to really applaud John Garfield's performance here - he shows not a shred of humanity. Considering he had already built up a reputation as playing sensitive loners, this was quite a chance he was taking.The end pulls punches compared to the story it is based upon, but you have to lay the blame for that at the feet of the censors at the time, not Warner Brothers. Highly recommended.

"Out of the Fog." The classic title for a noir, which this is not. Instead it's basically a stagy story of two quiet elderly men (John Qualen and Thomas Mitchell) who enjoy taking their outboard motor boat out of Sheepshead Bay for night-time fishing. Mitchell has a nagging wife (Aline McMahon) and a bored, impatient daughter (Ida Lupino) who works for the phone company. Both men have dreams of getting away from it all, buying a large boat and getting out into the Gulf stream, where it's always daylight. (Here, it's always night, and always foggy.) Enter the small-time extortionist, John Garfield, who hits the two guys up for five dollars a week for "protection" of their small boat. Garfield also begins squiring around Ida Lupino, throwing his money around, bringing her orchids ("five dollars for flowers that don't smell") and alienating her from her honest boyfriend, Eddie Albert. Garfield learns from Lupino that Mitchell has saved up $190 towards that big fishing boat, and he extorts that too.Mitchell and Quaylen plot Garfield's death in a Russian spritz bad in Brooklyn, while Kropotkin, George Tobias, carries on cheerfully and endlessly in the background about how he's just become "a bankrupt." In the end, neither Mitchell nor Qualen can murder the guy, who falls overboard and dies accidentally, conveniently leaving behind his wallet full of ill-gotten dough.The play was written by Irwin Shaw, who has left a legacy of some neat short stories and novels. (Read "The Girls in Their Summer Dresses" at once.) Many of the cast and crew came from the Group Theater, a fashionable leftist organization at the time, but if anyone can sniff out a hint of communism here he must be a bloodhound or a paranoid. In the play, the two old guys managed to actually murder the thoroughly obnoxious Garfield but in the film the code wouldn't permit it.Nobody will win any medals for this production but it's tightly written and professionally acted. Or -- let's put it this way -- if you liked Sidney Kingsley's "Dead End," you ought to enjoy this one. It even has one of the Dead End Kids in it, playing a waiter.Particularly enjoyable is the brief scene in the Russian bath, with George Tobias, whose monologue is really pretty funny, and its boisterous comedy is refreshing in this rather quiet, low-key tale of crime and adaptation.