The Battle of Sea Demons

It remains a mystery to me that 1942's The Black Swan exists and that people don't seem especially interested in it. I watched it again a few days ago. For my money, it's a better movie than Errol Flynn's pirate movies. Certainly it surpasses The Crimson Pirate or any number of other pirate films that get talked about.

I love how the beginning of the movie feels like the climax to another movie we didn't get to see. We catch up with Tyrone Power, Thomas Mitchell, George Sanders, and a host of ravenous buccaneers storming a Spanish fortress. First Power is caught and put on the rack, then the tables are turned and the Spanish governor gets a stretch. And then the daughter of an English diplomat turns out to be there and it's Maureen O'Hara.

Power as the pirate Jamie Waring without hesitation pins her to a wall and tries to kiss her. This follows from a scene where he and Sanders, as the pirate Billy Leech, got drunk over the prone bodies of two bound girls in their shifts. Why does Jamie become the hero and Leech the villain? Tyrone Power is handsomer? It's as good an answer as any for this totally amoral film.

How did this movie get made in the era of the Hays Code? I really don't get it.

It's perfectly cast, too. In addition to the four excellent folks I mentioned, Laird Cregor gives us the best screen depiction of the famous pirate Henry Morgan.

As in real life, he's appointed to the governorship of Jamaica. In the film we see he's plagued by petty backstabbing from government men who led more respectable lives. I wonder if the film was sold as some kind of precursor to the American revolution. Maybe pirates were just generally presumed to be exceptions to the rules.

Special effects and cinematography are top notch in this film, too.

Violence in the Fog

A big Frenchman awakens on a barge in California, wondering if he killed someone in last night's drunken haze. 1942's Moontide never really clears that up completely, one of the things that make it such a fascinating film noir.

The Frenchman is played by French star Jean Gabin in his first Hollywood role. He's introduced stumbling into a dockside tavern with a big angry dog between his legs.

There's definitely a lot of symbolism in this movie, most conspicuously during the sequence of Bobo's (Gabin) bender, which was partly designed by Salvador Dali. The most striking image is of a prostitute, Mildred (Robin Raymond), fading in and out of existence but leaving her immodest dress behind.

This dress and its supposed sluttiness play a big role in the film. Sadly, the Hays code prevented the dress from being more risque than showing a little triangle of skin below the breasts. It's worn much later in the film by Ida Lupino, who plays Anna.

Bobo rescues her from suicide and brings her home the barge where he's stopped his life of drifting to settle down with a job of selling fish bait. He has a friend called Tiny (Thomas Mitchell), though, who keeps trying to get him to hit the road with him. It's hinted pretty heavily that Tiny is gay and in love with Bobo, which is part of the reason the film later tries to implicate Tiny in the murder Bobo committed. Intriguingly, though, the film still makes more sense if you see Bobo as the murderer.

Claude Rains is in the film, too, as a night watchmen, oddly taken to wearing a big Boss of the Plains hat. Maybe these two details are to show him as a moral authority of enough gravity to absolve Bobo of the sins that are never spoken of directly.

Director Arthur Mayo heads a nicely gloomy production after taking over for Fritz Lang, who departed early in production. Gabin and Lupino are terrific together.

Moontide is available on The Criterion Channel.

Little Depth for Dark Waters

Of the many gothic melodramas from the mid-20th century that portray a woman being made to think she's crazy by people trying to cover up a crime, 1944's Dark Waters is not one of the best. But it's not bad and if you have a particular love for the gaslighting genre you'll find it a decent indulgence.

Merle Oberon stars as Leslie Calvin, a young woman who, as the film opens, is recovering from the traumatic experience of losing her parents when the boat the three were on was sunk. Filled with despair, she has a burst of enthusiasm when she receives a letter from her aunt and uncle in Louisiana, inviting her to stay with them in their massive bayou manor.

For some reason they don't show up at the train station but Leslie is rescued by the handsome and impossibly good Dr. George Grover (Franchot Tone) who takes her to aunt and uncle's.

Leslie and George ought to have been a little more wary when they discovered that two dodgy fellows played by Thomas Mitchell and Elisha Cook, Jr. are also staying at the house. Even more tellingly, once they find out Leslie's now deathly afraid of water, the two strange men jump on every pretext to drag her out onto a boat or across some treacherous little platform over the river.

When the reality is finally revealed it's more than slightly improbable and doesn't make sense based on what we've learned. This and the fact that George is intensely boring keep the film from being really effective but the performances from Oberon, Mitchell, and Cook, Jr. go a long way. There's also an effective appearance from an underused Rex Ingram as a former servant.

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A brace of solid angles took the fight.
A spider stretched between the bars of steel.
A jagged spark imperilled magic light.
A drawing of a cam'ra makes it real.
The canvas flat upon the water calls.
A misty spiral caged the sails to spill.
The solar rays descend like yellow walls.
Between the drops of sweat's a tired will.
The extra egg was pushed into the rice.
The lagging sun consumed its yolk in days.
The rusty engine starts but once or twice.
A heavy rain has wrecked the tops'l stays.
A calendar of pebbles makes the rock.
A timeless stone permits the empty clock.