Moonrise: File under Southern Gothic Noir Melodrama
Posted by Paulcito
Frank Borzage's 1948 film Moonrise is a standout among noir's lesser-known B-pictures and is one of the hardest to classify. A noir film you can argue about over a pitcher of cold beer (or two).
Moonrise was once to be a William Wellman A-list picture with Jimmy Stewart or John Garfield but ended up in the lap of Charles Haas at Republic, where Frank Borzage had, in his last years, signed a three-picture deal.
An oddity even in Frank Borzage's own oeuvre, Moonrise is a southern drama infected in equal parts by a noir sensibility and Borzage's romantic stamp. The film has a strange tension between a hardscrabble realism as scripted -- think Grapes of Wrath or Visconti's Ossessione -- and a noirish visual style contributed by cinematographer John L. Russell. Russell later shot Psycho for Hitch. Moonrise takes places in the small town of Woodville, set amidst swamps and rotten antebellum mansions, reminiscent of so many other romantic southern epics. But a David O. Selznick picture this is not. Based on a novel by Theodore Strauss and scripted by producer Haas, the dialogue is endlessly quotable and drenched in philosophy.
The film opens with a montage that shows the sad childhood of Danny Hawkins (Dane Clark). Hawkins is the town outcast, tormented as a child by the other children due to his father's public hanging for having for murdered a sloppy doctor who caused Danny's mother to die through malpractice. The worst cruelty is inflicted by rival Jerry Sykes (Lloyd Bridges), the town scion and all-around rich kid bully.
Post-montage, we begin at a southern ball where we meet the adult Danny and learn of his budding, tenuous love affair with the town schoolteacher, the stunning Gilly (Gail Russell).
Danny seems remarkably stoic about his status which has made him reclusive but still he shines with a certain trusting innocence and innate goodness. Hopelessly in love with Gilly, a taunt by Jerry Sykes in the woods behind the ball finally drives him the edge and in a moment of fury, he stones Jerry to death. Once the body is found, a frenzied manhunt for Jerry's killer begins and off we go.The essential noirness of this film lies in the tormented morality of the lead, Danny. With Jerry's death on his hands, he becomes obsessed over whether he has "bad blood", whether he, like his father, is beyond redemption and unworthy of love. During his hideout in the swamps and through confrontations with his confident Mose and his grandmother (a fine and frank Ethel Barrymore) he is eventually convinced that he can wrest some control over fate by turning himself in, but not before some frightenng scenes with Gilly where we sense Danny is so lost there is no return. Russell at times uses noir lighting to maximum effect, such as the interior mansion scene where he surreptitiously meets Gilly.
The film is filled with metaphors that match its brilliant dialogue, such as a scene atop a Ferris wheel where Dannys sense of entrapment at sharing the ride with the town sheriff is so palpable it causes him to jump.
In the swamps, Danny's reflections on his fate have their parallel in his being hunted as an animal - at one point he beats a dog out of frustration and later
regrets it. Allyn Joslyn shines as the town sheriff-cum-philosopher poet, who is worldwise and a scholar of both human nature and the towns limitations. Joslyn maintains a hope to the end that Danny can overcome his fatidical blood legacy and do the right thing.Luckily, Moonrise is now available in a nice restoration print that has been making the rounds of Borzage retrospectives this year. It was recently screened at several festivals including the Palm Springs International FF, the New York FF, Cinecon Classic, and at the Gene Siskel Film Center. Which bodes well for a future DVD release.
3 comments: