alexanderdavies-99382 "Out of the Fog" is one of the better films John Garfield made during this difficult time at "Warner Bros." He is cast against type as a thoroughly evil character, that of a gangster. Garfield takes centre stage, even though Ida Lupino is billed first. She has a lot of screen time though, as the daughter of one of the local fishermen. Garfield is running a protection racket in a small town fishing community but a few of the locals refuse to pay him. The gangster demonstrates how brutal he can be if he is defied. The film is reasonably atmospheric and has some good dialogue. Garfield and Lupino give the best performances but no one in the cast is poor. Regular "Warner Bros" character actor Jerome Cowan makes an appearance as the person investigating a death in the fishing town.

WarnersBrother As my username might suggest I like just about all things Warner but my Film Nut soul has to accept that not everything that came out of Burbank during the Classic Days was great. "Out Of The Fog" is an example. Despite an A budget and a cast of normally terrific actors, a Director who had helmed some of my very favorite films and photographed by no less than James Wong Howe it falls flat. Just flat.First, it is insanely stage-bound due to it's Broadway origins, very much like "Dead End" had been, though that film had much more interesting material and developed characters. It portrays , supposedly, life in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. This is accomplished by a pier along side the water tank. A persistent fog seems to prevail over lovely Sheepshead Bay...which helps to disguise how stagy the entire production is. I'm not sure what came first, the fog or the title. It isn't helped by Howe electing to use a soft effect which blurs the whole thing. (OK, it may be the only print is needing restoration). The comparison to "Dead End" is magnified by the presence of Leo Gorcey.Next we have John Garfield. I only know of two films in which he played a truly bad guy, this one and "He Ran All The Way" in which he is terrific. Here he gets to be a total Sociopath. Ripe for an Actor? Character development? A dark complex performance? Nope. He walks on, reads the lines (and plays to the back of the house like he is back on Broadway) and manages only to make some overcoats look good. Supposedly Bogart (who at the time was less of a star at Warner's than Ida Lupino OR Eddie Albert...which would change after "High Sierra" and "The Maltese Falcon) was to play the Gangster part and Ida Lupino pulled weight to get him off the picture. I think Bogie was lucky, his days playing thankless bad guy parts was about to be over. He dodged a bullet on this one.And then we have Ms. Lupino, who I adore, the magnificent Thomas Mitchell and the always perfect John Qualen. Qualen gets a walk playing a Fisherman who would materialize in whole on an Airliner in "The High And The Mighty" 15 years later. Lupino is very obviously not happy to be here, and her English accent slips out quite a bit more than usual. And Thomas Mitchell is given such a drivel ridden script that even he can't overcome it. Kudos to George Tobias (as ever) who gets to do a monologue that belonged on Broadway and sinks here. He is great, it stinks.Why did I give it a 6 instead of a five? I like overcoats.

whpratt1 Always liked John Garfield films and his style of acting, in this film John plays the role as Harold Goff who is a racketeer who lives around the water front and burns people's boats who do not pay for his protection money. Jonah Goodwin, (Thomas Mitchell) is an elderly man who owns a business and loves to fish along with his friend, Olaf Johnson, (John Qualen) who is a chef in a local store. These two men are confronted by Harold Goff who demands five dollars a week protection money for their boat, they eventually give in and start paying him. However, Harold starts dating Jonah Goodwin's daughter, Stella Goodwin and she starts falling in love with him. Harold finds out that Jonah has saved one-hundred and ninety dollars and so he decides to grab that money from him and that is when the trouble starts to happen. This is a great picture and one you will not want to miss. Enjoy.

groening-2 I found "Out of the Fog" to be a dreary film, in part because it takes place entirely at night (in a Hollywood studio's version of the slums of Brooklyn), and in part because its take on human nature is bleak.John Garfield, as a small-time gangster, offers up no redeeming qualities; he's pure evil in a smarmy sort of way, and so not very interesting. According to TCM's Robert Osborne, Humphrey Bogart was considered for this role. Though Garfield was strong in other movies, I believe Bogie would have brought more to the table in this one than we see from Garfield.Ida Lupino as the working class girl who wants to see a bigger, brighter world, falls equally short. She's sweet and kind to her father, yet dates Garfield's Goff character even after learning that Goff is shaking down dear old Dad. Her acting fails to reconcile these two facts (although the screenplay may equally be to blame).Though "Out of the Fog" apparently had its roots in socialist perspective, it comes off as patronizing; the working class folk should be happy with their lot, it suggests, and when their pleas for help are ignored by their government (represented by the court here), their only ally is the working class cop who walks the local beat."Out of the Fog" fails as a film noir crime drama and as a morality tale. The ending is happy -- though everyone we're supposed to care about returns to their bleak existence -- but it is an unsatisfying resolution.