Director: Anatole Litvak
Recently established as one of the top stars at Warners, John Garfield shed the wounded bad boy image for a vile, sadistic racketeer in Out of the Fog. With no intentions of suggesting psychological complexities, let alone the smallest hint of compassion, he admirably risked alienating his fans in a way that few actors might have dared. Adapted from Irwin Shaw’s play “Gentle People”, Garfield plays a thug who extorts money from two old fishermen in a small seaside town. Thomas Mitchell and John Qualen, both great character actors who often worked with John Ford, play the old men, and the luminous Ida Lupino was cast as Mitchell’s daughter, the love interest of Garfield. Litvak made some good pictures – most notably 1948′s The Snake Pit – but here he is too noncommittal to satisfy many of his subplots. Lupino doesn’t appear enough on screen to justify any of her actions, and, more appallingly, Litvak sabotages a pivotal scene that takes place in a sauna with some out-of-place comedy. The play’s original ending would not be allowed under the Production Code and, though the compromise isn’t terrible, a final speech about how one needs to accept their ordinariness is as patronizing as it gets. Despite these shortcomings, the cast is simply too good to be completely neutered by them, and as a result the film remains captivating enough to warrant some interest.
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