I gave "The Sea Wolf" 10 of 10. I wish I could give it more. It is, my wife says with detachment, a male movie, the kind men and boys like: adventure, action, lots of people hitting each other. I disagree. Since she declines to watch it, we leave it at that. I do disagree. "The Sea Wolf" is one of the most beautiful movies I know. It is also, in my opinion, the most beautiful film Michael Curtiz did. And I include "Casablanca" in that assessment. Curtiz must have seen in Robert Rossen's brilliant script loneliness and desolation. In the story of men, and a woman, wandering on a soundless ocean under the hand of a tyrannical master, he must have felt a return to his roots in the cinema of German expressionism. He found a kindred spirit in cinematographer Sol Polito, Italian master of German expressionism. The scenes are breathtakingly evocative, from the first shots: a fog-enshrouded street, a carriage passes, dissolute people laugh, a policeman's whistle, a running man, to the last image, George and Ruth drift toward an island of salvation, from the first words as the pickpocket's hand is stopped ("If you find anything in there, brother, I'll share it with you") to the end ("I knew it was a trick, I knew it"). Water is life. Here it is death. Water, not the sea, is the metaphor. Ruth and van Weyden are hauled into the "Ghost," ship of doom. A burst of water wipes the screen. Van Weyden awakes aboard ship. Our first sight is a crash of water, then another, against the porthole. He reaches the deck. He sees water hurled upon a dying man, the first mate, again and again. Cooky opens another porthole. Water drenches him. Water in the lifeboat is poisoned. As the "Ghost" sinks, water does not rise but rushes down on Wolf Larsen.
Who could ask for a sadistic captain better than Edward G. Robinson? He brings out the character's complexity. Wolf Larsen understands that the world has warped him. Yet he embraces his distorted life. Who could play a deliberate, intellectual character better than Alexander Knox (Hollywood's Woodrow Wilson)? His monologues, reciting from memory passages of an unwritten book, are perfect. Who could do an anguished, desperate woman better than Ida Lupino? - her cry, "you should have let me die," her plea, "leave me; I'm a jinx." It is amazing how she could hold her own, the only woman in an entire cast of men all playing blackguards and misfits. John Garfield is at his most intense. When he struggles against Wolf Larsen's oppression ("we're not nobodies, we're somebodies"), I see him confronting the blacklist that finally killed him. And there's fellow future-victim Howard da Silva alongside. Barry Fitzgerald must have relished his role, relieved of playing lovable tipsy Irishmen. He gets his teeth into this one, a low, lascivious, murderous scoundrel. He bites it, chews it, and spits it out. Gene Lockhart gets a rare chance to let loose. Stanley Ridges, Francis McDonald, Ralf Harolde, Louis Mason (noticeable in a bit part as always), among the best, most versatile character actors, fill out the cast. All of it plays to the accompaniment of Erich Wolfgang Korngold's score full of leitmotifs. Four portentous notes evoke the advent of Wolf Larsen's ship of evil. Rising and falling arpeggios signal the onset of his migraines and blindness. A forlorn theme trails Lupino and Garfield.
Two scenes, for me, are incomparable. Early in the film the small boat carrying Garfield to the "Ghost" disappears into the fog. A ferry, the "Martinez" bound presumably for that city, emerges from the right. The music shifts, sharp, jarring triplets over ominous chords. We see the ferry's wheelhouse. Captain and pilot peer anxiously ahead. The camera films them lit from below. The foghorn wails desperately. Alexander Knox stands on deck. Disaster impends somewhere. I know it was all done in Warner Brothers' water tank and with models. No "Titanic," even the high-tech epic, does it as well. The other scene - I say this sincerely - is one of the greatest moments ever filmed. George lies beaten in the hold. Ruth enters. Backlit, she stands framed against the open door. Backlighting follows her into the darkness. Behind it, Korngold lays a soft curtain of sound, a simple, melancholy theme first in the harmonica then taken up by strings: a pick-up, two quarter notes, two eighths, quarter; no more. Garfield and Lupino sit facing. The camera moves closer, then closer. Finally, Lupino's fraught face fills the screen. She lifts despairing eyes: "to be free, to be let alone, to live in peace, if only for a little while." Garfield's face replaces hers. Motion freezes, for a second. The screen goes black. A macho adventure, as my wife says? Perhaps. But it is a film of transcendent grace, a product of transcendent genius.
Who could ask for a sadistic captain better than Edward G. Robinson? He brings out the character's complexity. Wolf Larsen understands that the world has warped him. Yet he embraces his distorted life. Who could play a deliberate, intellectual character better than Alexander Knox (Hollywood's Woodrow Wilson)? His monologues, reciting from memory passages of an unwritten book, are perfect. Who could do an anguished, desperate woman better than Ida Lupino? - her cry, "you should have let me die," her plea, "leave me; I'm a jinx." It is amazing how she could hold her own, the only woman in an entire cast of men all playing blackguards and misfits. John Garfield is at his most intense. When he struggles against Wolf Larsen's oppression ("we're not nobodies, we're somebodies"), I see him confronting the blacklist that finally killed him. And there's fellow future-victim Howard da Silva alongside. Barry Fitzgerald must have relished his role, relieved of playing lovable tipsy Irishmen. He gets his teeth into this one, a low, lascivious, murderous scoundrel. He bites it, chews it, and spits it out. Gene Lockhart gets a rare chance to let loose. Stanley Ridges, Francis McDonald, Ralf Harolde, Louis Mason (noticeable in a bit part as always), among the best, most versatile character actors, fill out the cast. All of it plays to the accompaniment of Erich Wolfgang Korngold's score full of leitmotifs. Four portentous notes evoke the advent of Wolf Larsen's ship of evil. Rising and falling arpeggios signal the onset of his migraines and blindness. A forlorn theme trails Lupino and Garfield.
Two scenes, for me, are incomparable. Early in the film the small boat carrying Garfield to the "Ghost" disappears into the fog. A ferry, the "Martinez" bound presumably for that city, emerges from the right. The music shifts, sharp, jarring triplets over ominous chords. We see the ferry's wheelhouse. Captain and pilot peer anxiously ahead. The camera films them lit from below. The foghorn wails desperately. Alexander Knox stands on deck. Disaster impends somewhere. I know it was all done in Warner Brothers' water tank and with models. No "Titanic," even the high-tech epic, does it as well. The other scene - I say this sincerely - is one of the greatest moments ever filmed. George lies beaten in the hold. Ruth enters. Backlit, she stands framed against the open door. Backlighting follows her into the darkness. Behind it, Korngold lays a soft curtain of sound, a simple, melancholy theme first in the harmonica then taken up by strings: a pick-up, two quarter notes, two eighths, quarter; no more. Garfield and Lupino sit facing. The camera moves closer, then closer. Finally, Lupino's fraught face fills the screen. She lifts despairing eyes: "to be free, to be let alone, to live in peace, if only for a little while." Garfield's face replaces hers. Motion freezes, for a second. The screen goes black. A macho adventure, as my wife says? Perhaps. But it is a film of transcendent grace, a product of transcendent genius.