Frank Borzage - Moonrise (1948)

Like certain other films noir, the surprisingly under-recognized Moonrise seems to have escaped excavation and the critical resuscitation of so many comparable, and in many cases, it has to be said, inferior, ‘B’films. Perhaps since it sits distinctly outside its director’s canon this intense, dark and highly original flick seems to have missed its audience. Yet Moonrise remains, along with Night of the Hunter, Cape Fear and Thunder Road, one of the greatest of those unique one-offs that crawl out of the swamps of Southern noir. (Roger Westcombe, crimeculture.com)





Based on a novel by Theodore Strauss and adapted for the screen by Charles Haas, Moonrise was the third last film of Frank Borzage's career. One of the director's most admired works, Moonrise has also been described as atypical, and something of a special case in Borzage's oeuvre. With a storyline involving crime and violence, the film “departs dramatically from the simple love stories the director usually tells”. Moonrise also signalled a late stylistic progression in Borzage's work, one that sadly remained unexplored in the final two films he completed before his death in 1962.
If Moonrise is neither typical of Borzage or film noir in terms of its exploration of crime and violence, the film does in fact encompass the director's central preoccupations, and also conforms to many of the formal characteristics of the noir film. Borzage's films have been described as demonstrating the director's “profound commitment to the love story not only as something with a life of its own but as a dramatic parable that hymns the power of love”.
In Moonrise, the passionate if troubled central relationship between Danny (Dane Clark) and Gilly (Gail Russell) is thus consistent with Borzage's interest in “the wondrous inner life of lovers in the midst of adversity”. And as with many a Borzage film, it is a relationship that ultimately has a profoundly redemptive effect, as evidenced in the films' powerful conclusion.
If the love story in Moonrise is a classic Borzagian scenario, the film's visual style is decidedly less typical of the director's oeuvre. From the extraordinary opening scenes, with truncated framings, the forceful play of light and shadow and dynamic cross-cutting, Moonrise represents a departure from the more measured visual style of earlier Borzage works.
With the services of cinematographer John L. Russell (who went on to shoot Hitchcock's Psycho amongst others), Borzage employs tight framings and consistent close-ups, (particularly of the beleaguered Danny), off kilter angles, and an odd but effective focus on the hands and feet of the central protagonists. Even the lovers' romantic clinches are presented from unconventional angles, often obscuring facial expressions, and thereby making the emotional tenor of these scenes more difficult to read.
Borzage's stylistic innovations in Moonrise, while uncharacteristic of the director's work, align the film with the classic film noir canon. In Moonrise, as with many a noir work, the expressive visual style makes a significant contribution to the films' atmosphere of escalating tension and its pervasive sense of unease.
Borzage's predilection for shooting on studio sets, regardless of the storyline locale, gave the backgrounds of his films, as one reviewer describes, “an unreal fairytale quality”. This is very much in evidence in Moonrise. Despite its rural small town setting with adjoining swamplands, Borzage forgoes any suggestion of bucolic expansiveness. Rendering the town streets and surrounding countryside claustrophobic and oppressive, he creates a subtle feeling of disquiet and vague unreality entirely appropriate to the central protagonist's troubled state of mind.
Borzage once remarked that “Every good story is based on a struggle”. Haas' adaptation of Strauss' novel gave Borzage just such a good story. With powerful performances from his lead actors, particularly Dane Clark in arguably the best role of his career, Moonrise was a romance after Borzage's heart, with an additional layer of psychological intensity. It remains, justifiably, a critically acclaimed high point in his career. (Rose Capp, Senses of Cinema)







Realizada en pleno apogeo del film noir, Moonrise describe el tormento interior de Danny Hawkins (Dane Clark), quien luego de una pelea con el arrogante Jerry Syker (Lloyd Bridges) termina matándolo accidentalmente y escondiendo su cadáver en el pantano. Este será el inicio de un auténtico calvario personal en una de las películas más insólitas, desgarradoras en su romanticismo y atrevidas visualmente de la extensa filmografía de Frank Borzage.







Le Fils du pendu
En 1932, dans un village de Virginie, un homme est pendu sur l'échafaud. Daniel Hawkins, son fils, souffre depuis son enfance de la méchanceté et des sarcasmes de son entourage, lui reprochant d'être le fils d'un homme qui a été pendu. Un jour, au cours d'une bagarre, il tue accidentellement — en état de légitime défense — Jerry Sykes, le fils d'un banquier avec lequel il est en rivalité pour le coeur de la jolie Gilly Johnson. Une lourde culpabilité le rend de plus en plus méfiant et agressif au point d'envisager une fuite éperdue...





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