Moontide

1942 • NR • Series • Catalog pick

Forced to flee Paris during the Occupation, the great French leading man Jean Gabin starred in a brace of Hollywood films, the best of which was the first, 20th Century-Foxs MOONTIDE. Cast to type, Gabin plays Bobo, a brooding itinerant dock-worker who gets mixed up in a drunken brawl. Upon awakening, Bobo is convinced that he has killed a man by his mercenary pal Tiny (Thomas Mitchell). Despairing at the thought of having committed murder, not to mentioned being blackmailed for the rest of his life by the treacherous Tiny, Bobo is able to find a few fleeting moments of happiness with Anna (Ida Lupino), a suicidal young girl whom he has saved from a watery grave (The intensity of the love scenes may well be due to the allegedly real-life romance between Jean Gabin and Ida Lupino). Novelist John OHara adapted the screenplay from a book by actor Willard Robertson.