Discuss Clash by Night
Discuss → Movies → Clash by Night → General
I always looked at this film as a film noir mostly because it's packaged that way. But it's a heavy handed drama that just annoys me with the screaming acting. Monroe is of course an amazing presence in the film and the stand out.
Reply by Zürich Gnome
on October 21, 2019 at 7:40 PM
I agree. It was a very "stagy" production, reminiscent of the Clifford Odets play. Mostly interior shots, very claustrophobic, and lots of storm and stress. It's fairly faithful to the play, except for the ending, which is a completely different, "Hollywood" ending.
Keith Andes' first major film role, as Monroe's boyfriend, was all but swamped by her performance. The other, veteran actors all did a fine job, especially Paul Douglas, but they couldn't save this one. And Monroe, who was very intimidated by director Fritz Lang, was her legendary problem self, taking 26 takes to get one particular scene right.
I think the relatively good rating the film receives is more due to the names/reputations of the director and actors associated w/it, and less to it's actual content.
Reply by Zürich Gnome
on October 22, 2019 at 5:43 AM
I respectfully disagree. First, I don't consider Clash by Night to be true film noir at all, but just somewhat stagy melodrama. The term "film noir" was coined by a French film critic way back in 1946, six years before this film was released. In the U.S., the "film noir" designation was applied retroactively, but that does not make it illegitimate for the early films of this late-recognized genre.
Those early/classic noir examples were hardly melodramas in the vein of 1952's Clash by Night; e.g., probably the first true noir film Stranger on the Third Floor (1940), The Maltese Falcon (1941), Murder My Sweet (1944), Double Indemnity (1944), The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), The Big Sleep (1946) and Out of the Past (1947).
Both of my two favorite classic noir films, Out of the Past and Double Indemnity, adhere fairly closely to elements of the classic model: set in a gritty/nighttime/urban landscape, a basically good guy gets involved in a situation that spirals out of his control, and is brought down by a femme fatale.
The classic noir period ran from the 1940s through, roughly, the 1950s (e.g., Kiss Me Deadly (1955)); neo-noir started in the 1960s/70s, including inferior remakes of some of the classics.