The Sea Wolf **** (1941, Edward G Robinson, John Garfield, Ida Lupino, Alexander Knox) – Classic Movie Review 7316

Director Michael Curtiz’s 1941 The Sea Wolf stars Edward G Robinson, who gives a fine performance as tough tyrant Wolf Larsen, the cruel captain of the sealer Ghost, at the helm of Warner Brothers’ impressive, brutal action adventure, based on the famous old Jack London adventure novel.

Co-stars John Garfield as cocky sailor George Leach, Ida Lupino as runaway Ruth Webster and Alexander Knox as inadvertent passenger, writer Humphrey van Weyden, are all a bit at sea, but that does not stop director Curtiz keeping it all buoyantly afloat.

Van Weyden and fugitives Ruth and George are brought out of the sea and given refuge aboard the Ghost but then they find themselves Larsen’s prisoners and they plot an escape during a crew mutiny.

Above all, the movie is superbly stylish thanks to the imaginative sets by Anton Grot, handsome black and white cinematography by Sol Polito and the stirring score by the masterly Erich Wolfgang Korngold, though there is a shade too much chat in Robert Rossen’s literate and intelligent screenplay. It really is a polished production. It won an Oscar for Byron Haskins’s best special effects.

Also in the cast are Gene Lockhart, Barry Fitzgerald, Stanley Ridges, David Bruce, Francis McDonald, Howard Da Silva, Frank Lackteen, Charles Sullivan, Frank Mills, Louis Mason, Wilfred Lucas, Ethan Laidlaw, Oscar Dutch Hendrian, Ralf Harolde, William Gould, Jeane Cowan, Cliff Clark and Ernie Adams.

There are several silent versions (1913, 1920, 1926); the first sound version is in 1930; it is remade as Barricade (1950), Wolf Larsen (1958) and Wolf of the Seven Seas (1975), and again as The Sea Wolf in 1993, 1997 and 2001.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7316

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