The Nighttime Is The ….-Fritz Lang’s Film Adaptation Of Clifford Odets’ “Clash By Night” (1952)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Sandy Salmon

[Recently in this space we announced with the review of 1956’s Giant that that was the first film review by long time film critic Sam Lowell using the honorific emeritus- in short he had decided to put himself out to pasture. He will still provide his reviews but will no longer be the primary, or as in earlier times, the sole film critic here.

For now we will go with several reviewers starting with Sandy Salmon whose has had a by-line for years in the American Film Gazette. Good luck Sandy-Peter Paul Markin]    

Clash By Night, starring Barbara Stanwyck, Paul Douglas, Robert Ryan, Marilyn Monroe, directed by Fritz Lang, from the play by Clifford Odets, 1952

Sometimes a little gem of a film, a black and white film from the 1950s like the one under review here, Clash by Night, just kind of sneaks up on you. Frankly in all the years I have been reviewing films I was totally unaware of this beauty although I admit that unlike other reviewers I have never been that enamored of the film noir genre and so missing it probably was not that serious a sin of omission. But if you think about the matter a bit when you put a serious star like Barbara Stanwyck (she of that ankle bracelet shot coming down the stairs in Billy Wilder’s screen adaptation of James M. Cain’s Double Indemnity which was enough to hook Walter, a convenient insurance salesman,  and lead him down the garden path, lead him to a couple of well-placed slugs in the gut too), gruff Paul Douglas, 1950s handsome Robert Ryan, and upcoming world icon Marilyn Monroe with top rank noir director Fritz Lang (think The Big Heat where Glenn Ford takes down a whole corrupt operation almost single-handedly) and a screenplay based on a hot shot playwright Clifford Odets (he of Golden Boy and Waiting For Lefty) you are bound to produce a great cinematic effort. Plus place the whole thing in olden days post-World War II Monterey out in California when that town produced oodles of sardines-and John Steinbeck- and there you are.    

The strongest part of this effort is the emotions that the interplay between the various lead players bring out in a story line that is frankly about ordinary people, their ordinary dreams, and their extraordinary passions and predilections. Those emotions get carried forth, create the clash of the title, in some of the strongest dialogue that I have seen produced in film about the travails of people who are pretty lost in their own small world. Let me explain that idea via a look at the plot-line something I have been doing more recently with older films that I have reviewed.      

Mae, played by Ms. Stanwyck, has come home to working class Monterey after having been out in the big wide world and gotten her younger dreams crushed. She is now world weary and wary. She returns to her small family home where her brother, a commercial fisherman, remember old-time Monterey was the sardine capital of the world, is enthralled by Peggy, played by Marilyn Monroe, who is a lot more forgiving about the fate of a lost sister than he brother who nevertheless lets her stay. While keeping a low profile as something of a home body her brother’s boat captain, Jerry, played by gruff and throaty Paul Douglas, a regular stiff comes a-courting. After a while, succumbing to a strong desire to have somebody take care of her, to be settled she accepts Jerry’s offer of marriage. Even in accepting Jerry’s proposal though she warned him that she was spoiled goods.           

Things go along for a while with Jerry and Mae, about a year, during which they have a child, a baby girl, but Mae begins to get the wanderlust, begins to get antsy around the very ordinary and plebian Jerry. Enter Earl, or rather re-enter Earl, Jerry’s friend, who had been interested in Mae from day one when Jerry introduced them. He, in the meantime, was now divorced and takes dead aim at Mae. And she takes the bait, falls hard for the fast-talking cynical Earl. They plan for Mae to fly the coop with the baby and a new life. Not so fast though once they confront Jerry with their affair, with his being cuckolded. This is where the dialogue gets right down to basics. Mae gives Jerry what’s what about her and Earl, about her needs. Jerry, blinders off, builds up a head of steam and in another scene almost kills Earl before he realized what he was doing.

This is the “pivot.” Jerry takes the baby on his boat. Mae suddenly realizes that the baby means more to her than Earl who as it turned out didn’t give a rat’s ass about the child. Having been once bitten though when Mae goes to Jerry to seek reconciliation he is lukewarm but as she turns to leave he relents. Maybe they can work things out, or at least that is the look on Mae’s face when she is brought back into the fold at the end of the film.  You really have to see this film to get a sense of the raw emotions on display, and on the contrary feelings each character has about his or her place in the sun. Nicely done Fritz and crew, nicely done.