CLASH BY NIGHT

[826]

Stock Status: In Stock

$23.95

Director: Fritz Lang

Genre: Film Noir

Country: USA

Year: 1952

Barbara Stanwyck and Marilyn Monroe star in this Fritz Lang film based on the play by Clifford Odets. Lang (M, METROPOLIS, THE BIG HEAT) stays true to form with this disturbing yet subtle portrait of the dangerous undercurrents of everyday life and the push and pull of greed and loyalty in modern relationships. The film begins with Mae Doyle (Stanwyck) returning to the safe haven of her hometown, a small fishing community in Monterey, California. Upon her arrival, she is befriended by a newly married young woman working in the canneries, played by Monroe. Mae also finds a friend in a kindhearted fisherman whom she quickly marries. But before too long Mae has thrown herself into a tumultuous affair with another man.

In the second half of the movie, which takes place a year after the first, Mae willingly abandons her husband and child to pursue her affair. But she quickly learns that her new lover is a bitter, angry man. With him she's not the person that she used to be. She regrets her decision terribly and wishes that she could return to her husband--that is, if he could ever forgive her. Stanwyck's performance as a world-weary vamp is compellingly juxtaposed with Monroe's performance as a sassy, naive newlywed, as each character offsets the other's personal struggles. The storms that batter the coast of the gritty, realist locale mirror the storms that rage within each character as they search for the meanings of their lives.

The title of the film comes from Matthew Arnold's poem Dover Beach (1851). A place 'where ignorant armies clash by night'. Certainly this is a vivid image to describe conflict whose meaning and causes are hardly understood by anyone. Lang keeps to the beach imagery of the poem by his introduction credit sequence, showing storm tossed waves rolling in to the shore. It is a remarkably powerful opening.

DVD FEATURES

Fullscreen Version

English And Spanish Audio

Optional Spanish And Portuguese Subtitles

Biographies on the cast and crew (Spanish test)

CLASH BY NIGHT

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Product 4 of 25 in category Film Noir

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CLASH BY NIGHT[826]Stock Status: In Stock

$23.95

CLASH BY NIGHT

[826]

Stock Status: In Stock