Out of the Fog

'Out of the Fog' is director Anatole Litvak's excellent film version of the Irwin Shaw play, 'The Gentle People,' starring two of Warner Brothers greatest stars, John Garfield and Ida Lupino. Garfield plays a cruel, small-time racketeer who terrorizes two Brooklyn fishermen as the one's restless daughter (Lupino) falls in love with him. Both stars offer terrific performances, with Garfield especially good in a rare villainous role. Top honors, though, go to Thomas Mitchell and John Qualen, two of our very best character actors, who steal the film from the stars with their top-notch performances as the terrorized fishermen.

Highly recommended.

John Garfield is a sadistic, heartless thug in "Out of the Fog," starring Ida Lupino, Thomas Mitchell, John Qualen, and Eddie Albert. Garfield's life centers around intimidating scared, weak people into coughing up "protection" money so that he won't set their boats or businesses on fire or beat them to a pulp. Ida Lupino plays Stella, a young woman who's bored with her boyfriend (Eddie Albert) and sick of her life, and when she meets Garfield, she sees a chance for excitement. Little does she know that he's shaking down her father (Mitchell) and his partner in a fishing boat (Qualen).

This drama was interesting, had a rich atmosphere and a good cast. That, however, doesn't mean I enjoyed it. Garfield was so mean he was disgusting, John Qualen was so lily-livered I wanted to slap him, and all I could do was pity poor Thomas Mitchell. How Lupino could have had anything to do with Garfield after she found out he was demanding money from her father is beyond me.

The point of the film, brought home by Eddie Albert and Mitchell, is that Stella is just an ordinary girl and she shouldn't want or reach for anything special. Well, maybe she shouldn't have wanted or reached for any special via John Garfield, but how's that for a nice sexist 1940s message. However, the ending (not liked by at least one of the posters commenting here) does indicate that Stella will be able to achieve a balance in her life, so in that way, it was very satisfying.

The best characters were played by Mitchell and Qualen who, not surprisingly, give the best performances. They had a lot more to work with, Mitchell especially, and he gave it everything he had. Garfield's role was one-dimensional, and we learn nothing about how he came to be such a rat, so all you can do is hate him. Lupino's role is strictly ingénue - she found a better niche later on.

Interesting movie that, whether you like it or not, will hold your interest.

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.

What a treat! I just watched this movie, and apart from the ending which makes things come into place a little too neatly and quickly for my taste, I loved it. Not least the sense of style that Litvak and cameraman par excellence Wong Howe use to make this not very inspiring script come to life. The huge set, a provincial fishing village in Brooklyn, is wonderfully lit and photographed, only partly visible through the fog that weigh on young lusty Ida Lupino's mind as she dreams of better things, of Cuba and crystal-clear water, of glamorous, dangerous men who take what they want and make no excuses for themselves. At times the story is so downbeat that it takes a small miracle here and there to rise above it, but nearly all is ultimately forgiven. John Garfield is deliciously wicked as the racketeer who sets out to destroy everybody's lives in order to eke out his own beastly living, Thomas Mitchell and Anthony Qualen are brilliant in the real starring parts as the two old-timers who finally realize that they have to make a stand against the evil of this world. In a small, but significant part as a hilarious, bankrupt man in a sauna, George Tobias shines. If it ever comes your way, you should see it. It's the real thing.

John Garfield must have felt right back home with this gritty and relevant social drama that was originally on Broadway in 1939 as a Group Theater production. He fits the lead of Goff who's a dirty little protection racket gangster, terrorizing the gentle people who inhabit the Sheepshead Bay area of Brooklyn.

What must have annoyed Garfield no end was the ethnic cleansing of the story, the uprooting of all the Jewishness from the original play to the film. Out Of The Fog was originally entitled The Gentle People which was written by Irwin Shaw and ran for 141 performances on Broadway in 1939. If Garfield had not been in Hollywood in 1939 he could easily have been in the lead on Broadway.

On Broadway the part was played by Franchot Tone. Garfield fits the role perfectly, but I certainly would love to have seen what Tone did with the part. The Gentle People was hardly the kind of property that his studio MGM would have bought. Over at Leo the Lion Franchot Tone was rarely out of his dinner clothes, it was later when freelanced that he showed he was capable of this kind of role on screen.

The parts played by the two older men who are among several of Garfield's 'clients' are John Qualen and Thomas Mitchell. On Broadway they had distinctly Jewish last names and were played by Lee J. Cobb and Sam Jaffe. Garfield approaches these two men who are partners in a fishing boat and offers them 'protection' for $5.00 a week, a special rate because he's liking Mitchell's daughter Ida Lupino.

Shaw's play is of course an anti-Nazi allegory, but Warner Brothers decided to take the ethnicity away from the victims. Still the message is comes through loud and clear as Qualen and Mitchell decide that when the law doesn't work, they have to take matters in their own hands.

As always the mark of a good play or film is the development of lesser characters like Aline McMahon who is the longstanding perpetually suffering mother with continual aches and pains. Also Eddie Albert who plays Ida's steady reliable beau who looks rather plain next to Garfield's flash.

Robert Homans as the Irish cop on the beat who delivers a final summation for the results of the story has some words to the wise. There are times when conventional law enforcement won't do the job.