Moontide – DVD Review

Film, Reviews

Available at Amazon.com

It may sound odd, but Moontide is a movie in search of itself. Although released under the Fox Film Noir banner, it really doesn’t fit into that category. It has some of the basic elements—the interplay of light and shadow, a cast of flawed characters from the lower rungs of life, a dark secret, and a murder—but they don’t come together to form a noir movie. Moontide plays more like a love story set against a noir backdrop and the two just don’t go that well together.

The two lovebirds are Bobo and Anna. They meet when Bobo saves Anna from trying to drown herself. He nurses her back to health in his one-room bait shop; at first she’s decidedly ungrateful for his help, but gradually the two grow a connection that turns into full blown love.

But complicating matters is Bobo’s past and a dark secret known only to him and his friend, Tiny. There’s a strange homoerotic tension between Bobo and Tiny, and Tiny becomes extremely jealous of Anna. On the surface his reasoning is that she’s standing in the way of the two of them going off to more lucrative jobs in San Francisco, but the anger he displays is totally disproportionate to that reason.

Most of the movie, though, concentrates on the burgeoning romance, and Tiny, Bobo’s dark secret, and certain other events in the movie take a backseat. Although the idea of two damaged people coming together is a staple of noir movies, even that is downplayed because we aren’t given any information on Anna’s past, and once she and Bobo hook up any inkling of her previous pain and suicidal thoughts pretty much disappear, as does Bobo’s alcoholism and temper. Aside from the use of light and shadow, the basic noir elements seem to be pushed to the background in favor of the love story, which almost makes this a case of false advertising.

But that’s not to say that Moontide is a bad movie; it just wasn’t what I was expecting. While the story does have an identity crisis, the cinematography and the acting are both excellent. Moontide has some truly great actors such as Claude Rains, Ida Lupino, and Thomas Mitchell. But the star is Jean Gabin as Bobo.

Before this movie Gabin was already a famous film star in France, and Moontide was supposed to be his big Hollywood debut. He gives a nuanced portrayal of Bobo, a character with some very serious character flaws, who at the same time can be funny, compassionate, and even wise. Unfortunately for us, Gabin never made it in the Hollywood system. However, he did go back to France and had an extremely successful film career there. Hollywood’s loss was definitely France’s gain.

Ida Lupino also deserves praise for her role as Anna. In many ways the set up of the movie tries to hamstring her performance—her past and motivations are a mystery to us, and without that information Lupino has to convey her character through expression, voice inflection, and movements. This is, of course, the basic job of an actor, but she has to work double time because she has to fill in all of this missing information through that alone. She doesn’t get a monologue to explain why she was trying to kill herself, nor does she get to even drop clues in dialogue. She has to make us believe that her life really was bad enough to contemplate suicide, and she does this extremely well using little more than her eyes.

But in the end, Moontide is a confused movie. From a purely technical standpoint this is a good movie, but the odd de-emphasis of the noir elements and the concentration on the love story puts it in some kind of movie limbo—it’s not one thing entirely, and it’s not the other. It lacks a basic sense of self-awareness and that translates to the screen. If the moviemakers had chosen which genre they wanted to work in, or had been aware of where they were breaking conventions, this could have been a better movie. As it stands, this is one movie in search of its identity, and that’s not that entertaining to watch.

This was a great transfer to DVD, especially considering the age of the movie. The video was presented in 1.33:1 Full Frame, and the audio was presented in Dolby Digital Mono, which meant that there was no directionality to the sounds, but at the same time the audio came through crisply and clearly.

Audio Commentary by Foster Hirsch, Author, The Dark Side of the Screen: Film Noir

Turning the Tide: The Ill-Starred Making of Moontide (running time: 25:06)
Very interesting documentary about the making of the movie. It gave a lot of background information on the book the movie was based on and really went a long way to explain why the movie suffers from an identity crisis.

Still Galleries

Fox Noir trailers
Black Widow (running time: 2:34)
Dangerous Crossing (running time: 2:18)
Laura (running time: 2:31)
Vicki (running time: 2:18)


This really isn’t a noir movie—it’s a movie with noir elements. There are good parts to this feature, but not enough to raise it above its problems. Mildly recommended.

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Twentieth Century Fox presents Moontide. Directed by Archie Mayo. Starring Jean Gabin, Ida Lupino, Thomas Mitchell, and Claude Rains. Written by John O’Hara. Running time: 95 minutes. Rated NR. Released on DVD: September 2, 2008. Available at Amazon.com.