Clash By Night

This is an example of a DVD that was on my Netflix queue for months and months, patiently climbing the ladder, until when it arrived I had no memory of why I added it to the queue in the first place. But no worry--it's a decent film, directed by the estimable Fritz Lang and with a great performance by Barbara Stanwyck.

Wikipedia calls it a noir film, but it really isn't. That genre seems to have cast a pretty wide net, but there's nothing about this film other than moody black and white photography that would suggest noir. Instead it's a melodrama, a pretty sudsy one at that, but Lang and Stanwyck and Robert Ryan give it a hard edge.

The film is set in Monterey, California, around the fishing industry. Stanwyck returns to her home town, dropping hints that she's been around the block a few times. This is a nice twist on the usual plot of a man returning to his home town. She returns to the old homestead, where her brother (Keith Andres) isn't exactly thrilled to see her, but welcomes her back. He has a girlfriend (Marilyn Monroe) who is inspired by Stanwyck's peripatetic life and longs to shake the fish oil out of her pores and hit the road. Meanwhile, Paul Douglas, as a stolid fishboat captain, takes a shine to Stanwyck and asks her out. She warns him that she will end up hurting him someday, but the two get married and have a baby.

Douglas has a friend, a film projectionist played by Ryan, who is a self-loathing cynic. He's attracted to Stanwyck, and she is, too, but tells herself and everyone else that she hates Ryan. The two are cut from the same cloth, and dutiful but dull Douglas gets cuckolded. Finally Stanwyck must choose between the two of them.

A lot of this is a soap opera, but it's well executed. Stanwyck is great as the world-weary dame, and Douglas, in the William Bendix/Ernest Borgnine mode, is also very good as a decent man who gets in over his head. He thinks that providing love and security should be enough for Stanwyck, but she's the type of person who always is looking for something else. Ryan is fascinating as the third leg of this triangle, a guy who is outwardly the life of the party but on the inside is rotting.

The film, released in 1952, was the first that billed Monroe ahead of the title. Her nude photos (one of which would end up as Playboy's first centerfold) were circulated during the filming, making for something of a sideshow. In what would be a career trend for her, she drove Lang nuts, being late and not remembering her lines. But you can tell from just a few minutes that she had what it took to be a movie star.