Moontide (1942)

Mushy Hollywood romantic drama posing as film noir.

Feeling like a little slice of real life, a gypsy dockworker saves a suicidal prostitute, and then they save each other. There's some other pepper thrown in for spice but the game try for a cinema verite feel of the thing enthralls till the end for the most part. Gabin has most of the load thrown on him and he pretty much carries the thing, growling throughout, even when he smiles. Tommy Mitchell and Claude Rains deliver with their usual competent panache . Ida Lupino does relieved-not-to-kill-herself pretty good, too.

Moontide is a little ensemble movie that tries really hard to be film noir and really, really pretends but doesn't quite get the job done. Jean Gabin plays a vagabond Frenchman who pulls a suicidal waitress, played wonderfully by Ida Lupino back from the brink. The movie seems to coast on Gabin's European simplistic charm and the film's eclectic cast of characters, including the scene-stealing Claude Rains. Moontide does rack up noir points with a few vague murder mystery elements and some fantastic photography. The bender sequence toward the beginning designed by Salvador Dali especially. The stories behind Moontide are more interesting (see the making-of documentary on the DVD) than the movie itself, but it could've been worse.