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Staring: Jean Gabin, Ida Lupino, Claude Rains, Jerome Cowan, Ralph Dunn
Director: Archie Mayo
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Product Details
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: DVD
Brand: GABIN,JEAN
EAN: 0024543528593
Format: Black & White, DVD, Subtitled, Full Screen, Closed-captioned, NTSC
Label: 20th Century Fox
Manufacturer: 20th Century Fox
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: 20th Century Fox
Region Code: 1
Release Date: 2008-09-02
Running Time: 95
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Theatrical Release Date: 1942

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Editorial Review
Product Description

Genre: Drama
Rating: NR
Release Date: 2-SEP-2008
Media Type: DVD

Amazon.com
The little-known but affecting film noir Moontide is full of surprises, especially for the many film fans who may not have seen it until its release on DVD. It stars Jean Gabin, a huge star in his native France, who was trying to cross over to Hollywood stardom in this film, but ended up making just two Hollywood features. It also stars Ida Lupino as his love interest, and who is very affecting and memorable in what could have been a two-dimensional role. Gabin plays Bobo, a wharf rat with a drinking problem working up and down the West Coast of the U.S., and happens on the desolate Anna (Lupino), whom he sees trying to kill herself in the sea. That two such broken characters can find love and help heal one another is one of the main themes of the film, and an unexpected one in the hard bitten genre of film noir. Gabin and Lupino really shine, though Gabin can be a bit hammy in his jauntiness. Playing against type as the bad guy, with unspeakable intentions, is Thomas Mitchell (at the time much beloved, having just played Scarlett O'Hara's Pa in Gone With the Wind). Claude Rains is also affecting, as the local failed intellectual. The story behind Moontide is at least as engaging as the film itself, and happily, this DVD edition includes a 25-minute documentary on the hurdles, some nearly fatal, that faced this little film on its way to be made in 1941. First, it was to have been filmed on location in San Pedro, California--but then the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and every port on the West Coast was suddenly girded for possible attack, so the elaborate wharf set was created on the Fox lot. There were tons of risqué themes in the original book upon which the movie is based, and the tales of getting it past the censors are riveting.

And the behind the scenes drama was also intense; master director Fritz Lang started the film, but quit in a snit, and was replaced by the journeyman Archie Mayo. Surrealist Salvador Dali was hired to create a hallucinatory alcoholic dream sequence, but his imagery was reportedly too disturbing to use, so the studio threw it out, but replaced it with an appropriately "Dali-esque" scene, complete with menacing clocks and shuddery imagery. Film buffs won't want to miss this fascinating mini documentary. --A.T. Hurley

Customer Reviews

Moontide review, 2009-07-07
The movie is great, but I ordered this movie 19 May 09, it was suppose to be shipped by the 21st of May and I did not receive this movie until the 3rd of July.

Who Killed Pop Kelly ?, 2009-08-17
This is an interesting flop of a film.

This was French superstar Jean Gabin's American film debut. He made only one more film in America that was even less successful than this one before he returned to France for good in 1944.

Strange casting of Claude Rains, against type, doesn't fly.

I didn't buy the chemistry between Gabin and his co-star Ida Lupino. The story is dreamy, unrealistic and overly romaticized and it just doesn't gel.

Great lighting by Charles Clark creates all the right moods, but the total impact of the film is undermined with too many feel good concessions in the final frames.

Life and love in a fishing sack, 2009-06-15
Haunting and Ida Lupino. She is magnificent. Jean Gabin is a little off in his acting but not enough to spoil the film. As for Ida Lupino, I never could understand that her career was not bigger than it was until she started directing. The first successsful female director in Hollywood. Watch her for as director in a lot of fifties and sixties TV episodes. And in spite of the reviews "Pillow To Post" is still one of my favorite WWII comedies along with "The Doughgirls."

anybody had problem with dvd freeing up on the last quarter?, 2009-04-23
Great movie,except couldn'd watch last quarter.dvd frooze up and could not see how it ended.anybody else have a problem?

Maybe not the greatest art in the world, but I love it, 2009-02-15
Moontide is a very dark, very romantic, deliberately "artificial" film noir, essentially shot in studio lots. Gabin is really brillant, sometimes acting like one of the later method actors (eg. Paul Newman), with his never quiet hands, body and this french accent. Ida Lupino is typecast as an outcast, but no one can play such roles better than her (you can't believe that she only came in because Joan Bennett got pregnant). The supporting cast is excellent, you will find Thomas Mitchell as the villain (totally cast agains type, but brillant), and last but not least Claude Rains as a "street philosopher", commentator and good friend of Bobo the sailor (Gabin) and later Anna, his girlfried (Lupino). Good technical quality, good extras.

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