Out of the Fog

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.

Always liked John Garfield films and his style of acting, in this film John plays the role as Harold Goff who is a racketeer who lives around the water front and burns people's boats who do not pay for his protection money. Jonah Goodwin, (Thomas Mitchell) is an elderly man who owns a business and loves to fish along with his friend, Olaf Johnson, (John Qualen) who is a chef in a local store. These two men are confronted by Harold Goff who demands five dollars a week protection money for their boat, they eventually give in and start paying him. However, Harold starts dating Jonah Goodwin's daughter, Stella Goodwin and she starts falling in love with him. Harold finds out that Jonah has saved one-hundred and ninety dollars and so he decides to grab that money from him and that is when the trouble starts to happen. This is a great picture and one you will not want to miss. Enjoy.

In spite of the effort to "open up" what had originally been a play, this drama, like so many other adaptations, remains stagebound and static. Even with imaginative sets, camera work and lighting, the scenes are essentially conversations: two (sometimes three) people talking, each representing a viewpoint in the story's conflict among moralities - scenes that are all but devoid of physical action, unless you count lighting cigarettes as action.

As for the characters themselves, they are largely one-dimensional, and unconvincingly unworldly for big-city people of the late 1930s. I found the Ida Lupino character hardly credible in her inability to resist the lure of small-time thrills promised by a fling with Goff: she does in fact resist him initially, she is gently warned about his likes by her father, with whom she has an excellent relationship, and despite her yearning for something more than what she has, Goff is no different from scores like him that she would have seen come and go over the years.

Lupino and Garfield are cast as "types," resulting in neither having an opportunity to utilize their considerable talents. Eddie Albert, as he so often does, plays an ineffectual nice guy. Aline McMahon is a complaining wife, a role that seems to have no particular function in the story. The honors do indeed go to Thomas Mitchell and John Quaylen, who make the most of characters given an opportunity to weigh things in the balance, change their minds, and act according to their principles. Even so, the "comical" closing scene is out of keeping with the overall mood of the picture.

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.

In Brooklyn, fishing is the hobby of the workers Jonah Goodwin (Thomas Mitchell) and Olaf Johnson (John Qualen) and they use to fish every night in their old boat. Jonah's daughter is the twenty-one year-old telephone operator Stella Goodwin (Ida Lupino), who is an ambitious young woman that dreams on leaving her neighborhood. She is the sweetheart of the worker George Watkins (Eddie Albert), a simple man that dreams on marrying her.

When the smalltime gangster Harold Goff (John Garfield) arrives in Brooklyn, he extorts money from Jonah and Olaf to "protect" their boat from fire and dates Stella. Jonah tries to convince his daughter that Goff is a racketeer that takes money out of poor ordinary people but she does not care to her father since she sees Goff as her chance to have a comfortable life and visit new places. When she discloses to Goff that her father has savings, Goff demands the money to Jonah. Now the old man is convinced that the only chance to get rid off Goff is to fight back.

"Out of the Fog" is a good drama with John Garfield performing a cold racketeer and Ida Lupino kind of lost in a contradictory role of a silly young woman that seems to love her father but even after knowing that her boyfriend is extorting him, she continues to date the racketeer. Despite the bleak and amoral conclusion, "Out of the Fog" is a great classic. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Quando a Noite Cai" ("When the Night Falls")