The Nighttime Is The Right Time-With Fritz Lang’s Film Adaptation Of Clifford Odets’ “Clash By Night” In Mind By Film Critic Emeritus Sam Lowell

The Nighttime Is The Right Time-With Fritz Lang’s Film Adaptation Of Clifford Odets’ “Clash By Night” In Mind  

By Film Critic Emeritus Sam Lowell

No I am not here to look over somebody’s, some other reviewer’s shoulder now that Allan Jackson, the moderator on this site has let the cat out of the bag and told one and all that with my review of 1956’s Giant I was, as he put it, putting myself to pasture. Although I would not have put it that way a few more or less serious medical problems have required to back off a little on reviewing films, a task I have done now for over forty years-and will continue periodically to keep doing. Today though I am here to comment on a review of Clash By Night by one of the in-coming reviewers, Sandy Salmon, whom I have known for at least thirty year and have respected for his work at the American Film Gazette where he oversaw over forty thousand film reviews (and occasional popular music and book reviews as well despite the name) almost as long. At fitting commentary to that respect is that I have freely “stolen” plenty of stuff from his pithy reviews over years. So enough said about that.  

After reading Sandy’s review I also realized that I was not familiar with the film under review although as the regular readers know I live for film noir, or variations of it which I think is closer to the nut in Clash. So naturally I called him up to ask to borrow his copy of the DVD which he sent me a few days later and which I viewed a couple of days after that. No question as Sandy pointed out Clash is a little hidden gem of a film with the standout cast of Barbara Stanwyck, Paul Douglas, Robert Ryan, and a pre-iconic Marilyn Monroe. With top notch direction by Fritz Lang who knew how to set a mood from the beginning of a film to the end here with a close up look at the shoreline of Monterey out in California just north of famed Big Sur and Todo el Mundo where all the literary crowd pulled up in the 1950s and 1960s with a few stray musicians in tow,  setting us up for the clashing waves to come-human clashing waves and with a screenplay by my old friend Artie Hayes from the hot pen of playwright Clifford Odets who before he turned 1950s red scare fink, snitch, sell-out did some very good work (interesting that most of the finks and slinkers like him, Elia Kazan, Langston Hughes, Josh White and a million others never did produce that much good work after they  went down on their knees and guys like Dalton Trumbo, Dashiell Hammett and Howard Fast who carried their toothbrushes with them into the House Un-American Activities Committee’s witch-hunt tribunals lived to do some good work after the red scare blew away like dust.   

No question this film had a good pedigree, had the stuff that kept things moving along in the funny little human drama being played out among ordinary folk with ordinary dreams which got smashed up against  the real world. Sandy made some good points as he summarized the ploy-line for the reader.  I have no quarrel with that but what I want to do is highlight some things that Sandy, the soul of discretion, kind of fluffed. My take on what was going on with all that high-end dialogue that Artie produced to throw in the main characters’ mouths. (If you remember that far back Artie, in one of his few basically cameo film appearances naturally as a screenwriter laid on some serious advice to the William Holden character in Sunset Boulevard  about avoiding the high numbers on that street. Of course the character didn’t listen and wound up face down in a swimming pool with two or three slugs in him courtesy of the female addressee at one of those high-numbered places.)      

For openers let’s call things by their right name, this Mae Doyle, the role played by Barbara Stanwyck, was nothing but a tramp, a drifter and night-taker, one-way and the wrong way at that. Sure she had some femme fatale qualities, Sandy was right to make a comparison with Phyllis, the wanton femme and man trap who put Walter Neff through the wringer in Double Indemnity also played by Ms. Stanwyck, but here she was strictly from the wrong side of the tracks. Was bound to let some guy who just wanted a good-looking woman to fill his house with kids take the gaff.  Mae had come home to working class Monterrey (then famous for stinking sardines from stinking sardine factories, barking seals and the godfather of social novels John Steinbeck whose ghost still haunts the place come hard literary nights when the words just won’t come) after having been out in the big wide world and gotten her younger years’ dreams crushed. She was now world weary and wary looking for a safe port. Still, call me politically incorrect or culturally insensitive but once a tramp always a tramp.

Mae knew it, knew it all the time she was leading poor sap Jerry, the role played by Paul Douglas. She took a supposed tough guy, a guy who had been hardened by the sea and twisted him around in and out in two second flat once she got her hooks into him. Earl knew that, Earl played by Robert Ryan, knew from minute one that whatever play Jerry was making for Mae he, Earl, was going to go down and dirty under the silky sheets with her before he was done-wedding ring or no wedding ring. And guess what as you already know she, when she got bored with the frankly boring Jerry and his fucking fish smells, his goddam sardine aura, she was ready to blow town with the hunky Earl. Didn’t think twice about it even with a little child in the way. Yeah, Jerry was made for the role of cuckold, maybe deserved it for having, what did Sandy call him, oh yeah, the blinders on way before he found some silky negligees and come hither perfumes hidden in Mae’s bureau drawer courtesy of maybe equally sappy Earl.       

Then he man’s up, man’s up when it is too late as they, Mae and Earl are ready to take a hike with that little baby in tow. Then Mae got cold feet, supposedly was mother-hungry for the child and was ready to do penance for her indiscretions. Earl had it right though, had Mae pegged as a tramp, as someone looking for next adventure. That is what makes the end of the film run false as she practically begs Jerry to take her back now that she had seen the light. Jesus what a sap. Earl said it best. If she didn’t go away with him then it would only be a matter of time before she got bored again and took a walk, maybe came running back to him, him and the wild side of life. I bet six, two and even and will take on all-comers that she blows town before the next year is out. You heard it here first- a tramp is always a tramp-end of discussion. Nice first review here Sandy, good luck.