Moonrise

Moonrise (1948)

A small rural town is the setting for a man struggling with an ambiguous crime he has committed. It's a psychologically loaded movie, and the clues start with the first abstract frames and last through every scene to the end. There is enough simplifying going on to keep it from being a classic or having the inventive flair of some contemporaries (or like "Night of the Hunter" a few years later), but I was impressed again in this second viewing.

One of the strengths here is certainly the mood created by all the richly blackened night scenes, both in the town and in the woods. The camera moves with unusual elegance and boldness through the scenes, or you might say through the shadows. The heightened angles and lack of faces in the first few shots is a sign of the atmosphere to come.

The little known leading actor, Dane Clark, is almost perfect in his role, partly for doing a great job and partly for letting his awkwardness bleed through into the character's. You come to feel his circumstance as an utterly ordinary guy. The sheriff is a restrained character and the man's girlfriend has a wonderful simple presence as well.

The real meat of it all is the trauma this man goes through bearing the guilt of his actions. He isn't so much pursued as just haunted by the thought of being caught. It's like the secret we all have had at some point and we get away with it for awhile, but it wears you out from inside until something has to give. One of his solutions finally it to run for it, and he has one last turning point near the end with his grandmother played by Ethel Barrymore. The folksy philosophy gets a little thick, I suppose, but by this point you go along with it because it's true. And it's not what you might think.

If you don't like old movies this will feel clumsy at times. But if you do already have a hankering for film noir and other crime dramas, even ones with mostly unknown actors, give this a try. And keep your eyes open for some great photography by John Russell, who is as important as anyone in this production. On some level it's truly great stuff.

Normally, I would think when you pitched a film idea to Republic their first question would be "OK, what does this have to do with Westerns or John Wayne?" And here is a film from that studio that involves neither.

In a small Virginia town, Danny Hawkins' father is hanged for murder when Danny (Dane Clark) is just an infant. The result is that, for his entire life, other kids have tormented him for being the son of a man who was executed. Like he had any control over that anymore than he had any control over how tall he was. Thus is the nature of bullying. But I digress.

One night at a dance, out in the woods, Danny and his tormenter since childhood are having a fight. Jerry Sykes (Lloyd Bridges) is the tormenter, and when the fight turns against him, he picks up a rock. Bad idea. Danny gets the rock away from him and does to Sykes what Sykes was going to do to him - bashes his skull in repeatedly, with a lifetime of anger over this guy's bullying swirling in his head. Realizing what he has done, he throws Sykes' body into the swamp and goes back to the dance like nothing has happened.

The rest of the town is about as likeable as Sykes was - judgmental, snobby, a hive mentality. But those characters are largely kept at a distance as part of the crowd. The ones you get to know are likeable and sympathetic people - a retired brakeman living in the woods (Rex Ingram), Sykes' girl whom Danny unfortunately loves (Gail Russell), and believe it or not the sheriff, playing against stereotype for the lawman of a southern town of the era. Oh, and it turns out that Sykes was not that great a guy - he owed lots of money and he stole lots of money from dad's bank to pay his debts.

Given Sykes' bad character there might be any number of suspects, and given the decomposition of the body by the time it is found and the primitive nature of forensics as it was in 1948, Danny might not even be a suspect if he played it cool. But he does just the opposite of that, drawing the attention of the whole town by his suddenly bizarre behavior.

This is practically a one man show and probably the best performance Dane Clark ever gave as his character wrestles with bitterness, anger, guilt, and fear of the town that hanged his father and thus would probably never believe his own story of partial self defense. The costar of the film is the fantastic cinematography by John L. Russell, with beautiful black and white shading, with many important scenes being shot in the moonlight.

Danny Hawkins is still suffering from a traumatic childhood where he was teased and bullied relentlessly because his father had killed a man and been executed. Decades after leaving school Danny is throw into a state of temporary rage when another man (Jerry Sykes) makes fun of him for this very reason and from the resulting struggle he kills Jerry. Instantly regretting it, he is placed under suspicion and tries to escape but only finds himself trapped in more than one way by his crime and that of his father.

From the title alone I had no specific hopes for this film other than just using it to fill a bit of time while I did some ironing. However, once it opens with a well-directed and atmospheric moment of madness crossed with flashbacks I was taken by it and held with it even if it never consistently reached that height again. The plot is straightforward but has some surprisingly dark elements within it that make it worth seeing. The haunted character of Danny is the main reason that it is interesting, whether it be in the dialogue or in the visual touches (such as Danny and the raccoon coming face to face with much shared emotion).

Of course a big part of this working was a great performance from Clark who really gets into his character and dominates the film in an impressive manner. His performance is also helped by the good direction that frames interesting shots throughout the film, is imaginative when it needs to be and uses shadows really well; only in the final few minutes did I feel it lost this tone and delivered a morally satisfying that was required by the period. Support playing from Russell, Barrymore and others is OK but nobody really gets close to Clark; that said, it is amusing to see early appearances from Bridges and Morgan in small roles.

Overall this is an enjoyable film that feels quite imaginative despite its rather straightforward narrative on the surface. The direction produces a good atmosphere and clever shots while the material has a moral darkness and complexity to it that works well even if it does tend to chicken out near the end. All this is delivered really well by Clark who eats up the scenery in some scenes while also being able to internalise a lot of stuff surprisingly well for what came across as a rather low budget affair. Worth seeing for what it does well.

Although the story could have easily been adapted into a gritty film noir, director Frank Borzage turns it into a dreamlike, and even romantic, saga of guilt and expiation. The plot is simple and uncomplicated. No cynical, wisecracking dialogue; no hard-boiled detectives or double-crossing femme fatales. The small town setting with frequent rural scenes creates a world far removed from the unusual noir cityscape. The love story unfolds with both strong sexual attraction and delicacy. Imbued with a strong atmosphere and vision all its own, MOONRISE resists easy classification. Like THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER, it succeeds in creating a drama of mythic resonance in an American rural setting.

Dream-like dark film about a man driven to murder. Aside from the soundtrack and the lack of southern accents, this movie shines. A great b-movie with great visuals. Check out star Dane Clark goes eye to eye with a racoon, realizing they're both trapped with no escape. The film's not for everyone, but if you like b&w film noir you should dig this one up.