MOONRISE
(1948)
Starring Dane Clark, Gail Russell, Lloyd Bridges; dir: Frank Borzage
Moonrise immerses us in swamp country for a meditation on ‘nature’ of all kinds - including human. The thing about Southern noir is that nature is not only everywhere but a player in the drama. Contrast this with your typical urban thrillers where, amongst all the built structures and machinery we narrow our focus onto the one unpredictable element in the mix – the protagonist. In Moonrise we see, and quickly come to feel, the swamp as metaphor for this small town setting, subtly reinforcing our view of its human inhabitants.
Director Borzage’s clever tactic of showing us all the action from the point of view of Danny, Dane Clark’s central character, is one reason for this sense of immersion, but even more subtle is this native Southern boy’s near-complete lack of an accent, let alone any ‘aw-shucks’ yokelisms. He’s a universal character, his very neutrality earning him center stage in this sphere of fetid growth where the great noir standbys - buried guilts and past secrets – bubble to the surface.
The film’s struggle, which Dane Clark portrays economically and brilliantly, is between society’s labelling of Danny as a ‘criminal type’ versus his belief of his own inner goodness. This is established from the outset through the stunning opening montage limning the story’s background (the execution by hanging of Danny’s father while the boy is in infancy and the ensuing torment and harassment by other children– especially rich preppie brat Lloyd Bridges) which makes it clear you are in the hands of a cinematic master. The brutal linkage this montage climaxes with – cutting from the father’s noose in shadowed profile to a ‘mobile’ hanging over the infant child’s cot – still packs a jolt, especially on the big screen. Clark, an unassuming, 1940s prole-looking leatherneck who often picked up John Garfield comparisons, plays Danny (not surprisingly) as a pent-up ball of resentment who seethes with internalised anger.
Moonrise rings with emotional truth. There’s a sense here of being inside the protective layers of these characters which affords us a real intimacy, even more so than in the films of Nicholas Ray.
The sensual ‘closeness’ of the setting is a continuum stretching from the dark swamp where Bridges meets his demise to the environment’s calm center – the town square populated by old-timers. Wonderful texture is added by other cameos: the ‘jive’-talkin’, pseudo-hipster soda-jerk who gets on everyone’s nerves; the grumpy old men of the town square, out of circulation but sitting in judgment from the park benches, and the ‘Zen’ sheriff.Frank Borzage Is not a name to be conjured with these days, but someone had to be the first winner of the Oscar for Best Director, in 1927, and not only was this him (with Seventh Heaven) but he backed it up with another gold statuette in 1931 for Bad Girl. Back then Borzage was the King of Romance, the filmmaker who invented gauze over the lens for the misty long shots and weepy close-ups in long-forgotten froth such as Humoresque, History Is Made At Night, and Street Angel.
A decade and one World War later and Romance of such gossamer, ethereal hue had lost its currency in the postwar 1940s. But Moonrise proves Borzage was capable of adapting to darker times and bringing his immense gifts for sensual filmmaking into more subterranean realms. The consummation of Danny’s love for Gail Russell’s schoolteacher Gilly – in darkness in an abandoned mansion (ironically inverting all the sunny tropes of Hollywood Romanticism he largely invented!)
– really shows where Danny’s emotional worldview is at, as well as it reveals the surrounding community’s repression. (It also explicitly justifies the inversion that gives the film its title.)Nature and human actions fuse symbolically throughout Moonrise. Danny’s killing of the fly which is disrupting a quiet police interrogation, before the sheriff can swat it, shows who is the most determined to decide the outcome of this investigation. Just before Danny, out in the woods, (needlessly) kills a raccoon up a tree in order to divert bloodhounds from unearthing hidden evidence of his guilt, Borzage dissolves from his fraught face straight to that of the ‘coon with its ‘masked bandit’ facial markings indicating the look of an outlaw, showing Danny’s actions are symbolically killing himself. The self-destructive effect of this paranoia peaks in a memorable setpiece at the fairground, and seems to presage Hitchcock’s Strangers On A Train (1951), when Danny panics on the top of the ferris wheel thinking the sheriff is zeroing in on him and jumps off, then comes to (also very similar to Strangers) with faces in frame-filling extreme close-up
.Like certain other films noir (Fred Zinnemann’s Act of Violence and Robert Rossen’s Johnny O’Clock (1946), each burdened with a weak title, come to mind), the surprisingly under-recognized Moonrise seems to have escaped excavation and the critical resuscitation of so many comparable (and in many cases, it has to be said, inferior) ‘B’ films. Perhaps since it sits distinctly outside its director’s canon this intense, dark and highly original flick seems to have missed its audience. Yet Moonrise remains, along with Night of the Hunter, Cape Fear (1955) and Thunder Road (1958 – still Mitchum), one of the greatest of those unique one-offs that crawl out of the swamps of Southern noir.
- Roger Westcombe