Truly Dreadful Film

not horrible nor great

A Disappointing Continuation

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

As my username might suggest I like just about all things Warner but my Film Nut soul has to accept that not everything that came out of Burbank during the Classic Days was great. "Out Of The Fog" is an example. Despite an A budget and a cast of normally terrific actors, a Director who had helmed some of my very favorite films and photographed by no less than James Wong Howe it falls flat. Just flat.First, it is insanely stage-bound due to it's Broadway origins, very much like "Dead End" had been, though that film had much more interesting material and developed characters. It portrays , supposedly, life in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. This is accomplished by a pier along side the water tank. A persistent fog seems to prevail over lovely Sheepshead Bay...which helps to disguise how stagy the entire production is. I'm not sure what came first, the fog or the title. It isn't helped by Howe electing to use a soft effect which blurs the whole thing. (OK, it may be the only print is needing restoration). The comparison to "Dead End" is magnified by the presence of Leo Gorcey.Next we have John Garfield. I only know of two films in which he played a truly bad guy, this one and "He Ran All The Way" in which he is terrific. Here he gets to be a total Sociopath. Ripe for an Actor? Character development? A dark complex performance? Nope. He walks on, reads the lines (and plays to the back of the house like he is back on Broadway) and manages only to make some overcoats look good. Supposedly Bogart (who at the time was less of a star at Warner's than Ida Lupino OR Eddie Albert...which would change after "High Sierra" and "The Maltese Falcon) was to play the Gangster part and Ida Lupino pulled weight to get him off the picture. I think Bogie was lucky, his days playing thankless bad guy parts was about to be over. He dodged a bullet on this one.And then we have Ms. Lupino, who I adore, the magnificent Thomas Mitchell and the always perfect John Qualen. Qualen gets a walk playing a Fisherman who would materialize in whole on an Airliner in "The High And The Mighty" 15 years later. Lupino is very obviously not happy to be here, and her English accent slips out quite a bit more than usual. And Thomas Mitchell is given such a drivel ridden script that even he can't overcome it. Kudos to George Tobias (as ever) who gets to do a monologue that belonged on Broadway and sinks here. He is great, it stinks.Why did I give it a 6 instead of a five? I like overcoats.

First some background, this movie takes place in Sheepshead Bay . It's NYC's fishing port located in Brooklyn. Today Sheepshead bay has numerous Party and Charter boats that recreational fishermen fish off.This movie is a wonderful movie with a great cast. Thomas Mitchell and Ida Lupino and John Garfield were perfectly cast. To someone who fished out of Sheepshead bay, this movie makes a lot of sense to me. When the actors mention local places I know where their talking about Nice movie all the way around. Another good movie with Lupino and Garfield was the Sea Wolf, also made in 1941. That's another movie that should be watched. Thank goodness for Turner Classic movies, it's a treat watching those great movies. The movies today are for the most part garbage.

Why was this movie even made ? I didn't like any of the characters. The gangster was despicable, without any redeeming qualities. The two old guys were pretty spineless throughout most of the movie. The Eddie Albert character was a nice guy but too boring and predictable. The Ida Lupino character was interesting but why did she go for a total bottom feeder like the gangster ? I realized she wanted more excitement in her life, but how could she pick such a loser as the gangster character ? Finally, the two spineless old men gather the nerve to kill the gangster, but essentially fail. It's only through dumb luck that they make it out alive.

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.