Moontide (1942) on Netflix
NR19421h 34mDramaRomanceThriller
After an all-night drinking binge he cannot recall, dock worker Bobo wakes on a San Pablo Bay barge. The police are hunting whoever strangled Pop Kelly, and Bobo fears it was himself.
- Netflix3.4/5
- IMDb6.8/102,631 votes
- Rotten TomatoesNot available
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Plot summary
Dock worker Bobo wakes in a shack on a San Pablo Bay barge after a drinking binge he cannot remember. Takeo, the fisherman who owns the barge, tells him they met the night before and that he agreed to work for him, and Bobo, recalling none of it, intends to leave. Then a police boat passes with word that Pop Kelly, a local barfly, was strangled during the blackout, and Bobo, capable of violence when drunk, stays and takes the job. In town he meets his friends Tiny and Nutsy, the watchman and an amateur philosopher, and Tiny urges him to leave town with him that night. Near the water, a group shouts that a young woman is drowning; Bobo pulls her out and carries her back to the barge.
Cast
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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Moontide (1942)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Fritz Lang left the directing job on Moontide soon after shooting began, rumored to be over friction with star Jean Gabin about Marlene Dietrich, who had been involved with both men. It is not known which early footage is Lang's and which is replacement director Archie Mayo's.
- Surrealist Salvador Dalí was hired to create Moontide's drunken opening montage, but his sketches were judged too bizarre, so the scene was shot with only traces of his influence, such as the close-up of the clock and the headless woman.
- Moontide's planned location work on San Pablo Bay was scrapped after the attack on Pearl Harbor, when the west coast was declared a security zone. A large studio set was filled with water for the barge scenes, giving the film a dream-like ambiance.
- Twentieth Century Fox bought the rights to Willard Robertson's novel despite its themes of prostitution, rape, cannibalism and murder, but the Motion Picture Production Code forced the studio to drop most of the story.
- Jean Gabin was unhappy inside the Hollywood studio system and with its publicity demands, and after the war he went back to working exclusively in France.
