Clash by Night (1952)

Love in a Fogbank - Clash by Night review by griggs

Fritz Lang’s Clash by Night feels like someone left a love story out in the sea mist too long. Barbara Stanwyck blows back into her coastal hometown, marries the kindest fisherman alive (Paul Douglas), then promptly falls for his brooding mate (Robert Ryan) because danger seems more thrilling than domesticity. It’s not romance she’s chasing, really — it’s the illusion of choice in a world that gives her none.

Seen through a modern lens, Mae Doyle isn’t a femme fatale so much as a woman worn down by limited options. Safety means surrender, passion means punishment, and every path leads back to male control. Lang and Stanwyck see her clearly: a woman testing the walls of her own cage, knowing full well they won’t give.

It’s full of people who mistake passion for freedom and end up tangled in their own nets. Marilyn Monroe even drifts through, bright as a buoy in all that gloom, before the fog rolls back in. The real clash isn’t just between lovers — it’s between what you want and what you can actually live with. And in Lang’s world, that sort of arithmetic never quite works out.

Heavy Soap. - Clash by Night review by Steve

Weighty melodrama adapted from Clifford Odets' social realist Broadway play about an adultery. Of course, at the height of the Production Code there was only so much a Hollywood film could say and show on this subject and the ending especially is compromised. But Fritz Lang shades the film with some noir atmospherics and the interesting cast makes the film worthwhile.

A hard-luck dame (Barbara Stanwyck) returns to her home town, a fishing port on the California coast. On the rebound, she marries a dull stalwart (Paul Douglas) but then falls into a stormy affair with his boozy braggart best friend (Robert Ryan). That's already a decent cast-list, and a pre-stardom Marilyn Monroe also appears...

...as a worker in a fish processing factory! But glamorous. She's clearly a star in waiting but hasn't yet created her trademark sexpot schtick. Stanwyck delivers a handful of great lines with vinegary aplomb. The first half is slow as she is reluctantly courted by Douglas, but comes to the boil when Stanwyck and Ryan are whooping it up.    

Lang laces the melodrama with documentary footage of a working fishing port which lends some authenticity. There is a realistic impression of damaged survivors shuffling their dwindling chances of happiness. In 1950, audiences had just seen A Streetcar Named Desire which instantly dated this. But it comes alive still when Monroe is on, or Stanwyck casting her spiky epigrams.