Clash By Night (1952)

“Home is where you come to when you run out of places.” Mae

Set in the sleepy fishing village of Monterrey, California, Clash By Night is the story of people thrown into desperation by the return of a woman who had left years before.

The film starts out with sequences of nature - seagulls, seals, the waves, and weather followed by the return of the fishing fleet in a foreshadowing of how nature and man have had to adapt to each other - a clash, if you will. It also establishes that no matter how much adaptation takes place, the basic nature of things remains unchanged.

We see the production line by which fish are processed and turned into tins of sardines at the cannery. We meet the main characters: Jerry (Paul Douglas) owns one of the fishing boats; Peggy (Marilyn Monroe) cleans fish at the cannery, Joe (Keith Andes) is her boyfriend. He works on Jerry’s fishing boat. We see MaeBarbara Stanwyck coming from the train station to her old house; she is Andes’ sister.

Stanwyck is waiting on the porch, locked out, when Andes and Monroe return. After a bit of sparring, Andes welcomes her back. Stanwyck and Monroe hit it off well. Stanwyck describes her ten year hiatus simply as “big ideas, small results.”

A worldly gal soon attracts attention and she is pursued by the big oaf Jerry (Paul Douglas), who provides for his elderly father and uncle. At a key point, Stanwyck makes a big speech about how she’s wrong for Jerry, she will hurt him. Of course, this causes him to become even more deeply infatuated with her. They marry and have a child, but a recurring character, the mercurial Earl (Robert Ryan), Jerry’s best friend, recognizes Stanwyck for what she is and is continually prodding her. She at first rebuffs him, but yields after Ryan spends the night after passing out drunk. Her betrayal brings on the Clash By Night.

While classified by Warner Bros and the IMDb as film noir, the violence in Clash By Night is more psychological than physical. Director Fritz Lang is well known for his insightful visual commentary on the malaise of the modern world and this turbulent romance is a little off his beaten track. The source material was a play by Clifford Odets and much of the dialog is too sophisticated to be believable for simple village people to utter, rising on occasion to the florid.

The cast, of course, is premium, headed by Barbara Stanwyck (Double Indemnity), Robert Ryan (The Wild Bunch), and Paul Douglas, and these actors are able to lend a believability to the scenes that lesser actors could not. Marilyn Monroe (The Asphalt Jungle) is of interest because it is her first major role with her name appearing before the title. Bit parts are carried off with aplomb by J. Carrol Naish (Sahara) as the drunken scalawag of an uncle who keeps Jerry’s life interesting, and Silvio Minciotti as the mournful, accordion playing father. The sets look lived in and Lang makes good use of the multiple angles provided by elements such as stairways and doorways. Nicholas Musuraca provided the excellent dark cinematography - perhaps that’s why they classify it as noir, as much of it takes place at night.

The Warner Bros DVD is presented in B&W, in 1.33:1 theatrical format and running 105 minutes. There is a commentary by film director Peter Bogdanovich (Last Picture Show) with audio inserts from Director Fritz Lang’s own comments from a 1965 interview on the picture. The commentary is fair, especially helped along by Lang’s observations.

I would recommend Clash By Night mainly to women; or men who like a well rendered love story with dark themes.

Thanks for reading!


Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good Date Movie