Out of the Fog (1941)

Director:

Anatole Litvak

Writers:

Irwin Shaw (play)
Robert Rossen (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

14 June 1941 (USA)

Genre:

Crime | Drama | Film-Noir

Plot:

Fishermen Jonah Goodwin and Olaf Johnson are confronted by gangster Harold Goff who tries to extort "boat protection" money out of the two men...

Plot Keywords:

Boat | Gangster | Orchestral Music Score | New York City | Brooklyn New York City

Cast

John Garfield	...	Harold Goff
Ida Lupino	...	Stella Goodwin
Thomas Mitchell	...	Jonah Goodwin
Eddie Albert	...	George Watkins
George Tobias	...	Igor Propotkin
John Qualen	...	Olaf Johnson
Aline MacMahon	...	Florence Goodwin
Jerome Cowan	...	Assistant D.A.
Odette Myrtil	...	Caroline Pomponette
Leo Gorcey	...	Eddie
Robert Homans	...	Officer Magruder
Bernard Gorcey	...	Sam Pepper
Paul Harvey	...	Judge Moriarty

Also Known As:

The Gentle People (USA) (working title)

Runtime:

85 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Sound System)

Certification:

Australia:PG | Finland:K-16 | Sweden:15 | USA:Approved (PCA #7091)

Company:

Warner Bros. Pictures

Trivia:

Humphrey Bogart was originally chosen to play Harold Goff. However, Ida Lupino had just finished shooting They Drive by Night (1940) and High Sierra (1941) with Bogart, and they had not gotten along. Lupino protested, and because she'd had a bigger name than Bogart at the time, she got her way, forcing an angry Bogart to shoot off a telegram to Jack L. Warner asking, "When did Ida Lupino start casting films at your studio?"

Movie Connections:

Featured in The John Garfield Story (2003) (TV)

Soundtrack:

Whistle While You Work

Doesn't adapt well

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.