The play’s NOT the thing in “Clash by Night”

It was while exploring the mid-century American films of Fritz Lang that I recently saw Clash by Night. I had previously watched two RKO films directed by Lang and starring the great Edward G. Robinson. The Woman in the Window (1944) turned out to be an influential early noir, with the kind of “surprise” ending that in retrospect seems more than a bit cheap. I enjoyed it, despite its predictability, much more than I liked Scarlet Street (1945), which supposedly is the first Hollywood movie in which the creep who fries in the electric chair is NOT in fact the killer. The third Lang film I watched starred the always interesting Barbara Stanwyck along with burly Paul Douglas and Robert Ryan, of whom critic Manohla Dargis has written, “[he was] born to play beautifully tortured, angry souls.”  During the opening credits I was surprised to find this film was adapted from a Broadway play by Clifford Odets.

 The Odets connection made me turn once again to my personal Odets expert, Beth Phillips. Beth, who is finally close to finishing a monumental biography of Odets, reminded me that, though Odets wrote some marvelous original screenplays (like Sweet Smell of Success), none of the Hollywood films adapted from his groundbreaking plays had the benefit of Odets’ input. When approached by studios, “he just took the money and ran.” So it’s no surprise that the screen version of Clash by Night differs hugely from the stage version: the location is switched from Staten Island to Monterey, California; a key ethnicity shifts from Polish to Italian, so that Lang can shoot a big fat Italian wedding scene. More importantly, as was typical in this era, the stage play’s brutal ending is considerably brightened in the film, with Stanwyck’s character finally embracing domesticity and the husband who loves her beyond reason.

 Beth is hardly a fan of the original Clash by Night, which she calls “probably Odets’ worst play, a blatant melodrama” without much in the way of social ideas behind it. Not knowing any of this, I found the film interesting to watch, mostly because the central characters were well realized. I liked the film’s opening, with ocean waves dramatically crashing on the shore, and I suspect Lang enjoyed filming some of the gritty on-location introductory scenes, full of fishing boats and women earning their pay in a sardine cannery. (Yes, that ‘s Marilyn Monroe, in dungarees, toiling over a trough full of wriggly fish.)  

 Within the central love triangle, I was most impressed by Paul Douglas as the good-hearted but not too bright Jerry D’Amato, who certainly deserves better than he gets from Stanwyck’s Mae.  Stanwyck herself is notable as always, playing a dame (that’s got to be the right word for her!) who can never be satisfied by the life she leads. Robert Ryan, the third side of this triangle,  effectively conveys his general bitterness toward the world in which he finds himself. Still, I had some gripes. Monroe’s character, the soon-to-be fiancée of Stanwyck’s fisherman brother, doesn’t make a lot of sense in her continued admiration for Stanwyck, despite it all. And I have a special grudge against “Where’s the baby?” movies. Supposedly, both Douglas’s and Stanwyck’s characters are deeply affected by the love they feel for their infant daughter, Gloria. So—while Douglas is at sea, how can Stanwyck and Ryan sneak off to spend hours enjoying themselves at a local carnival, apparently leaving poor Gloria all alone in her cradle? The carelessness suggested by this kind of plotting speaks to me of a film that was hustled to completion.