One of my all time favorites.

It is not deep, but it is fun to watch. It does have a bit more of an edge to it than other similar films.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

This must be both one of Jean Gabin's and Ida Lupino's best films, although Thomas Mitchell's acting also is better than ever, for once not entirely sympathetic but rather tragically pathetic, and even Claude Rains plays a very unusual part for his qualifications - he stands out as the most mysterious character in this off hand fishing village drama of California, where there is nothing else to do but to work and drink, and you are usually out of work. It's a very Frank Borzage kind of setting and intrigue, which makes it only the more precious for its marvellous direction - Fritz Lang was part of it, and not only Archie Mayo. Ida Lupino enters as a suicide and goes through a marvellous transformation during the course of worrying events, ending up in almost an accidental murder case. You never get to know how Pop Kelly really was murdered or by whom, since everybody involved in the probably accidental murder must have been more than just drunk, and nothing is ever proved, although Ida could be right in her final conclusions. The one who should know everything and probably does is Nutsy (Claude Rains), who keeps sympathetically quiet about it. But it is Jean Gabin's film above all, superbly seconded by Ida Lupino at her very best. The whole film is worth watching just for his entrance.

One of two American made films that Jean Gabin did in Hollywood while in exile from his beloved France is this item Moontide. It's not anywhere in the class of The Grand Illusion, Pepe LeMoko, or La Bete Humaine in fact it goes over into melodrama. Still it's a good showcase for his talent and appeal.Gabin is a happy go lucky sailor who is beached with his pal Thomas Mitchell in the small coast town of San Pablo in California. He's a nasty drunk however who can be provoked to violence and has been. Another waterfront denizen Arthur Aylesworth is killed and Gabin is tormented by the fact that he was on one big bender the night of the homicide and it could be him.But that doesn't stop him from saving the life of Ida Lupino who tries to drown herself because of her own relationship problems. These two fall for each other and they plan to settle in San Pablo and marry. And of course there's no room for Mitchell in the new setup.Which doesn't please Mitchell at all. He's basically a leech who's attached himself to Gabin and he doesn't want to give up his meal ticket. Claude Rains who is a droll waterfront philosopher calls him a pilot fish which is a fish that hangs around sharks and lives off the scraps they leave. Time for Mitchell to find another shark.Given that this is the Code era and that a major studio 20th Century Fox produced Moontide the rather obvious homosexual attachment of Mitchell to Gabin is hard to miss. Perhaps that is something that the original director Fritz Lang might have explored a bit more. In fact the film could have been a classic had Lang stayed with it.Still the cast acquit themselves well in Moontide and a film with Jean Gabin is always something special.

Moontide (1942)What a surprise, and with some well known actors in little known roles. And one little known actor in the U.S., the great French star Jean Gabin. All put together in an elegant, fast, and sympathetic way.The story is rather sweet, a love story between two unlikely loners, the charming and volatile hard drinking Bobo, played by Gabin, and the young and troubled Anna, played by Ida Lupino. Each of their pasts looms and interferes in the romance, mainly through the maliciousness of Bobo's old friend, another violent man played by Thomas Mitchell. And then there is the incomparable Claude Rains (you won't recognize him in the first scenes with his beard), who plays a truly good friend. All of this takes place in a little fishing shack at a big stone breakwater on the California Coast somewhere, and most of it takes place at night. Archie Mayo, who made a lot of really good films and few if any masterpieces ("Petrified Forest" is his most famous, from 1936), really does show mastery of storytelling here. And with cinematography by Charles Clarke good enough to get an Oscar nomination (with some help by the more famous Lucien Ballard), you can see why this is better than most. Fritz Lang is shown as a co-director behind the scenes, and you get suspicious that the visual strength of all this is partly his doing. But it is the story itself that might be the achilles heel here--it progresses with some twists that are suggested in the first few minutes, and that don't turn and surprise us later. The end is the end you expect, all neatly packaged.Not that you don't mind so much--the leading characters are, if nothing else, very likable. But along those same lines, I think every scene is filmed by-the-book. Very likable, and competent, and rather beautiful all along, but lacking the edges of uncertainty, of emotional depths you would expect from these kinds of characters, even of drama in the few scenes of violence. "Moontide," with its poetic title, insists somehow that it is a just a performance and an entertainment, a light romance, even though it's just an inch from tipping into something much bigger.

After a three-year gap ,this was Gabin's return.It is hard to gauge it accurately cause in the 1937-1939 years ,an era when French cinema was arguably the best in the world ,he starred in at least five masterpieces ("la Grande Illusion" and "la Bête Humaine" by Jean Renoir,"Quai des Brumes" and (my favorite) "Le Jour se lève " by Marcel Carné ,and finally Jean Gremillon's "remorques") .All that he would do afterward would necessarily be a let-down."Moontide" is not in the same league as his previous French performances but it is nevertheless an interesting work for any Gabin fan.The actor integrates well in an American cast (and the cast includes earnest thespians such as Ida Lupino,Claude Rains and Thomas Mitchell)and his English is quite good (don't forget that Gabin was essentially an autodidact ,which is much to his credit;His contemporary equivalent for that matter is Gerard Depardieu) The screenplay may not be very exciting -and it's full of holes at that- but the atmosphere -which recalls sometimes "quai des brumes" - and Gabin's character -who,like Lantier in "la Bete Humaine" ,has an ominous past:wasn't his father a criminal brute?- are all that matters .For his second (and last) American movie,Gabin was directed by his compatriot (who put him on the map with "la Bandera" ) Julien Duvivier .