MOONTIDE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 8, Issue 193, 5 March 1943, Page 13

MOONTIDE

(20th Century-Fox)

REMEMBER Angels Over Broadway? Remember Out of the Fog?-especially Out of the Fog-well, you’ve some

idea of the type of film that Moontide is. A film that belongs largely to the night-time, but not the gay nighttime; a film that deals with people who live on the precarious edge of crime; a film that won't be a box-office success, but one that will be remembered for a long time by all the people who are interésted in the film as art, and especially by all the people who are interested in the art of Thomas Mitchell and Ida Lupino, and, from now on, in the art of Jean Gabin. Archie Mayo directed Moontide, and if he had never done any other good jobs I’d say he had become a director of sensibility overnight, as it were. And if he never does another good job, our little man will still give him a cheer for this film. According to the theatre advertising, Jean Gabin ("making his first film in America, and pronounced Gab-ban"), is the star. Ida Lupino comes second, and Thomas Mitchell and Claude Rains are placed equal third. But have you ever seen Thomas Mitchell act badly? He has played sympathetic parts and unsympathetic ones-and here he has a very unsympathetic one-but I always leave the theatre feeling "honours to Thomas Mitchell." Make this film a must on your list, and watch that face that was so benign in Angels Over Broadway, so remorseful in Out of the Fog; watch greed and cunning, and perhaps all of the seven deadly sins in the face of this character who is extortioner and blackmailer and murderer; watch that terrified flight at the last towards the angry sea and you'll surely agree: "Honours to Thomas Mitchell." The woman sitting next to me was:apparently out there on the rocks with Jean Gabin and Thomas Mitchell (Tiny), at the end; for as Gabin cried "Come back!" to the terrified extortioner, at bay at last (only it wasn’t a bay; it was sharp, black rocks and a pounding sea), she leaned forward and said clearly: "No, let him go. Best thing for him." But honours also to Ida Lupino, Jean Gabin and Claude Rains. Gabin is Bo-bo, the man with strong wrists, the man who gets so drunk he cannot remember what happened the night before, the man who is reminded from time to time by Tiny, his friend, that once he choked a man to death. So when Pop Kelly is murdered (the old man has been strangled), Bo-bo has a very horrible time trying in vain to remember where he was all night. And Tiny says: "I know who killed Pop Kelly." He says it also to Ida Lupino — who, for a reason that is never told, tried to drown herself, and was saved by Bo-bo. He does not need to say it to Claude: Rains (Nutsy), for that very kind little friend has found the name Pop Kelly in the old hat that Bo-bo wore home the night of the murder. So just to save possible trouble, he burns the hat. In the end, it is Ida Lupino, the terrified bride, who

discovers the clue to the murder of Pop Kelly, and in discovering it becomes herself the victim of those terrible hands. But do not be alarmed. This film ends well for the hero and the heroine. Ida Lupino is building up her record of good performances in far from easy parts. She is here the girl who has never known a kindness from a human being, suddenly confronted with kindness. It is not criticism to say I would like to see her next in a less tense role; but it doesn’t matter-I’ll go to see her just the same; and Thomas Mitchell; and Jean Gabin.