Moonrise/1948/Republic Pictures/89 min.
Dane Clark and Gail Russell play small-town lovers.
Last month, I caught Frank Borzage‘s “Moonrise” on the big screen at the Billy Wilder Theater in Westwood. It’s an enchanting and perplexing little flick. Dane Clark and Gail Russell star as small-town Virginia lovers Danny and Gilly who face a rather formidable obstacle: Danny killed Gilly’s ex-boyfriend Jerry (Lloyd Bridges) in a fight and, though Danny seems to be getting away with murder, his guilt and anxiety gnaw away at him endlessly. The anxiety is of the bad-seed variety, stemming from the fact that his father was hanged for murder many years before. Rex Ingram plays Danny’s sage chum Mose; Ethel Barrymore plays Danny’s grandmother.
Danny must confront his past.
The script is what you might call quirky and it becomes curiouser and curiouser upon reflection. (Charles Haas based his screenplay on a novel by Theodore Strauss.) Danny and Gilly apparently grew up in the same small town, though she says she has seen him only twice. She’s now a schoolteacher, though, so maybe that refers to sightings since she returned from college. (Get used to cutting slack.) Despite the fact that she was engaged to Jerry, son of a wealthy bigshot, Gilly falls almost instantly for jobless outcast Danny. Even after Danny endangers Gilly’s life with reckless driving and randomly jumps off a Ferris wheel, Gilly remains head-over-heels for the dude.
The sins of the father hang over Danny but not all the time, it seems. While half the townsfolk despise Danny, the other half are madly in love with him, including the wildly kind-hearted and sympathetic sheriff (Allyn Joslyn). This is the kind of lawman any femme fatale would kill to have on her side. (Oops, there I go being all literal again.)
Rex Ingram plays Mose, Danny’s best friend.
And though Jerry has picked on Danny since childhood, it apparently doesn’t cross anyone’s mind that the two men might be enemies and that Danny might have had a heck of a grudge against Jerry. Then there’s the ending – so strangely upbeat and morally triumphant, I wondered if there was some crucial footage missing.
But I don’t want to trash “Moonrise” because it doesn’t deserve it. Despite the uneven script, the actors are all fun to watch. Borzage brings his characteristic romantic sensibility to the work and cinematographer John L. Russell creates uncommon beauty. An oddly endearing film noir, “Moonrise” played on a big screen is among the most luminous of visual poems.
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