Out of the Fog **** (1941, Ida Lupino, John Garfield, Thomas Mitchell) – Classic Movie Review 10,274

Warner Bros’ skilful and atmospheric 1941 film noir crime drama Out of the Fog stars John Garfield, Ida Lupino and Thomas Mitchell. 

Director Anatole Litvak’s 1941 Warner Bros film noir crime thriller Out of the Fog is a highly skilful and atmospheric film of Irwin Shaw’s 1939 play The Gentle People, about a tinpot mobster Harold Goff (John Garfield) who menaces ordinary Brooklyn fishermen Jonah Goodwin and Olaf Johnson (Thomas Mitchell and John Qualen) to extort cash from them. The duo decides to fight back – to the death.

The aging Goodwin and Johnson are trying to buy a new boat, but their Brooklyn pier is controlled by gangster Goff, who extorts protection money from them of $5 a week. They hatch a plan to kill him.

Vivid acting from a top-drawer cast, an excellent script by Robert Rossen, Jerry Wald and Richard Macaulay, and moody noir cinematography by James Wong Howe complete a fine package.

Garfield is wonderfully creepy in a tour de force; Mitchell and Qualen are compelling; and Ida Lupino does well, bringing power and conviction in the soppy role of Mitchell’s daughter Stella Goodwin, who loves Garfield even as she realises that he is no good.

Also in the cast are Eddie Albert, George Tobias, Aline MacMahon, Jerome Cowan, Leo Gorcey, Odette Myrtil, Paul Harvey, Charles Wilson, Jack Mower, Ben Welden, Murray Alper, Barbara Pepper, Charles Drake and Jack Wise.

It runs 85 minutes.

It was released on June 14, 1941 (US).

Perhaps because of disappointment at the script’s changes from the play, the box office gross was lower than Warner Bros expected.

Out of the Fog is directed by Anatole Litvak, runs 85 minutes, is made and distributed by Warner Bros, is written by Robert Macaulay, Robert Rossen and Jerry Wald, based on the play The Gentle People by Irwin Shaw, is shot by James Wong Howe, is produced by Hal B Wallis, and is scored by Heinz Roemheld.

The cast are John Garfield as Harold Goff, Ida Lupino as Stella Goodwin, Thomas Mitchell as Jonah Goodwin, John Qualen as Olaf Johnson, Eddie Albert as George Watkins, George Tobias as Igor Propotkin, Aline MacMahon as Florence Goodwin, Jerome Cowan as Assistant district attorney, Odette Myrtil as Caroline Pomponette, Leo Gorcey as Eddie, Robert Homans as Officer Magruder, Bernard Gorcey as Sam Pepper, Paul Harvey as Judge Moriarty, Charles Wilson, Jack Mower, Ben Welden, Murray Alper, Barbara Pepper, Charles Drake and Jack Wise.

John Garfield was called to testify before the US Congressional House Committee on Un-American Activities, when he denied any communist affiliation and refused to name names, effectively ending his film career.

Robert Rossen was a member of the American Communist Party from 1937 to 1947. He was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee twice. He exercised his Fifth Amendment rights at his first appearance in 1951, refusing to say if he had ever been a Communist, and was blacklisted by Hollywood studios and unable to renew his passport. At his second appearance in 1953 he named 57 people as current or former Communists, and his blacklisting ended.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,274

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