Come Inside By Fearless Young Orphan Moontide (1942) Directed by Archie Mayo On the shores of chilly Northern California lies a small community making a living off the ocean. Bobo (Jean Gabin, and do your best to get over the silly name “Bobo”) is a wharf rat, a semi-functioning alcoholic who spends his days getting just enough money to buy liquor and stave off a persistent blackmailer. That would be Tiny, a bizarre creep who wants Bobo in so many ways that it defies simple description. Tiny and Bobo are actually friends of a sort, in that Tiny seems to revere Bobo and Bobo tolerates Tiny because he tolerates everybody. But a couple years before, Tiny claims he witnessed Bobo killing a man, when Bobo was too drunk to remember for himself. Provided Bobo keeps Tiny in booze money, Tiny will keep his mouth shut. He wants for Bobo to come with him to San Francisco where Bobo can make really good money as a dock worker. You see how this works? The more Bobo makes, the more Tiny makes. The fact that Tiny has a weird, repressed man-crush on Bobo just makes things a little more complicated. At the beginning of the film, another murder takes place. A local curmudgeon named Pop Kelly is found strangled, and strangling is Bobo’s supposed “preferred” method of killing. Trouble comes along in the form of a dame, as always. Anna (Ida Lupino) is only trying to kill herself; that’s nobody’s business. But she tries it in front of Bobo, who comes to her rescue, pulling her from the ocean and preventing her one-way swim. He saves her from police investigation by claiming that she is his girlfriend, and then takes her to recover at the dilapidated floating shack from which he sells bait, fixes boats, and generally drinks his days away. Anna awakens in the morning and cooks him breakfast. Somewhere over eggs and toast, they fall in love with each other. Bobo has never settled down anywhere or with anyone, but he thinks Anna might be worth it. Anna thinks the shack would be nice with some curtains, and she likes the way that Bobo looks at her. Tiny does not like at all the way that Anna is interfering with his plans (whatever those may be) for Bobo. He comes to Anna and threatens her: get out of Bobo’s life, or I’ll tell the police that Bobo killed Pop Kelly. Anna is too close to having real happiness, maybe for the first time ever, to give it up easily. She and Bobo proceed to plan a wedding without mentioning it to Tiny. Tiny is frustrated to not have been invited, to say the least, and pays Anna a visit on her wedding night. I realize that all sounds rather standard, a story that we’ve seen before. It would be standard if not for some very interesting casting and great performances, plus a story that feels more deeply than it would necessarily have to feel, withholding secrets from us sometimes, making us care. We’ll talk about Jean Gabin, Ida Lupino and Thomas Mitchell below on the scorecard, but I should give special mention to supporting actor Claude Rains. Playing completely against type (or at least, the type I’m used to seeing him play, which was the elegant Alex in Notorious), Claude Uh, Claude? Is that you? Rains impressed me as a bedraggled night watchman Nutsy1, whose job is as much bumming around as Bobo’s seems to be. He is a good friend to Bobo and Anna, though, stealing a couple scenes in the film. This smart man realizes pretty easily and early what kind of bully that Tiny is, knowing that everyone would be a lot better off without that man in the picture. This is the kind of friend we all need. The trend in the Orphan’s Noir Scoire has favored these quiet, unassuming little noir pictures, giving us some of our very high scores. I know this one is going to do very well on the Noir Scoire, so let’s take a gander at why. The Scorecard: Our Hero: Bobo, a self-described gypsy of the wharfs, who is just barely getting by in life and is fine with that. He’s a charming guy as only a real drifter can be, with his live-and-let-live attitude and his geniality. This is a guy who will punch you to the floor and then offer a hand to help you back up again. Still, there is a hard core of temper in him, when something he loves is threatened. And when he loves something, he loves it passionately, as we can see by his sudden, willing surrender to Anna with barely a flinch of surprise. His fatal flaw? Could it be that he drinks until he blacks out? Uh, yeah. And blackouts plus violent tempers are never a good combination. 10/10. As Played by: French actor Jean Gabin, who did his fair share of film noirs. Gabin is a big bullish man and a very physical performer, dominating the screen 1 A funny side note: Claude Rains’ character’s name is Nutsy (because the men in this film do have the silliest names: Bobo, Nutsy, Tiny) but Jean Gabin’s extremely French accent says it “Nazi” and so it sounds often as if he is addressing the man as such. “Hello, Nazi! Thank you, Nazi! Good night, Nazi!” Neither here nor there, it’s just something funny that happened while I was watching the film, especially since Claude Rains’ Alex in Notorious was, in fact, a Nazi. Jean Gabin’s accent is charming beyond the telling of it. with his bulky grace. He is a bit too roughened to be considered handsome, but I don’t hear the ladies complaining. His portrayal of Bobo is effortless – possibly he was just playing himself? – and we can easily see why everybody likes this guy. He’s winsome, often very funny, unexpectedly romantic, and has an aura of serious, tightly wound passion in him that should not be tampered with. Hell, Anna knows him for about an hour before she decides that she doesn’t want to kill herself, after all. 10/10. Femme Fatale: Anna is a seductively vague femme fatale. She begins her role in the film by trying to kill herself, thus adding that layer of tragedy that really helps these girls shine. We will never be told exactly why she wanted to die, not even a hint. All we know is that once she sees Bobo as a brand new life, she becomes fiercely loyal and brave. Her bravery is admirable, but dangerous for her. 9/10 As Played by: The wonderful Ida Lupino. I love this actress. I don’t find her to be classically beautiful, but she’s extremely sexy, even when she’s suicidal, she’s intelligent, and what a spitfire too! Ms. Lupino tells us a lot with her eyes, which seem to see everything. The way she plays Anna, it seems that suicide might have been the nerviest choice for a woman fed up, and then when she falls in love, her shy hope is endearing. 10/10 The mastermind: Our villain is Tiny: bully, blackmailer, lovesick bum. Not smart, but clever enough to be dangerous, he has affixed himself to the manliest of men and made it so that Bobo cannot be rid of him. He is a lazy blackmailer, living an easy enough life until a woman gets in the way of his cushy situation. The kind of slimy threats and blows to which Tiny will resort are not one bit surprising, though they might disappoint us in humans as a race. 10/10 As Played by: Thomas Mitchell. Yes, that’s right. It’s Uncle Billy from It’s a Wonderful Life. You know, the one who lost all of George’s money? Dumb jerk. Anyway it gave me rather a turn to see him like this. This performance was scary, strange, even a little repulsive. Mitchell seems to hold nothing back, I’ll grant him that. Sometimes his acting borders on buffoonery, but it never crosses the line, which makes it somehow a little scarier. 9/10 The location: A ratty little wharf-side town in northern California, where nobody seems to have access to showers or shaves. A great deal of the film takes place in Bobo’s shack on the water; other scenes take us to a rough bar, or the shadowy, foggy nights on the beach. As the denizens of the film joke, “What sunny California? It’s nothing but rain and fog.” 10/10 The crime/frame: Bobo possibly killed someone two years ago, and possibly killed someone else just a few nights ago, and his so-called “friend” Tiny is blackmailing him over it. Then, later, Tiny will attack Anna, driving Bobo to seriously consider revenge. 9/10 The mood: Strangely, the mood is hopeful. Oh sure, we begin with Bobo and Anna in their respective holes, he drinking himself to death, she swimming herself to death more quickly, and their surrounding characters are all grimy and tired- looking. But once the romance begins, the movie becomes increasingly happy and positive, probably necessary so that we are horrified by the idea that Tiny could ruin it all. 9/10. The sex factor: Jean Gabin generates enough sexually energy for the whole film, and Ida Lupino has no trouble keeping up with him, hers laced with a certain shyness that really makes things a lot steamier.