Largely rewritten from a fast-flop Clifford Odets play (Odets fanciers will recognize a few choice epigrammatic howlers, ‘You can’t make me any smaller, I’m pre-shrunk’), this kitchen-sink infidelity drama is unexpected territory for director Fritz Lang , but seems to have helped him over a slump. Scripter Alfred Hayes moves the action to a California fish factory town, giving Lang & crack cinematographer Nicholas Musurca a chance to open with a mini-documentary, sketching in sea, seals & sea gulls, along with boat men, factory girls (Hey!, Marilyn Monroe sorting sardines!) and the docks by the train tracks as Barbara Stanwyck returns home sans fame or fortune. Constructed like a silent, it makes a superb (and original) opening half-reel. Too bad it’s the best thing in here. The rest is slightly overplayed, overdrawn misery as a toughened up Stanwyck finds herself equally repelled & drawn to Robert Ryan, a man as unfeeling & selfish as she is (they both call it honesty), even as she wills herself to marry (and cuckold) his best pal, solid, comfortable Paul Douglas. (Douglas is just tremendous in this tricky part. Compare with Ernest Borgnine in MARTY/’55.) And Monroe? She’s married to Stanwyck kid brother Keith Andes (in a role Ryan played on stage*), and a lovely, unneurotic delight. (Maybe a tough, meticulous, largely unsympathetic director like Lang kept her away from destructive/artsy ‘enablers.’) Ultimately, the Odets play can only get you so far, second drawer stuff. Though Lang amusingly stages half his big scenes right in front of a kitchen sink! Such a literalist.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *On stage, Tallulah Bankhead, Lee J. Cobb & Joseph Schildkraut had the Stanwyck, Douglas, Ryan roles. It still only ran a month.
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