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French-born dock worker Bobo (Jean Gabin) travels from town to town, performing odd jobs and getting drunk. He comes to San Pablo, California, to meet his Irish friend Tiny (Thomas Mitchell), who finds jobs for him, and Bobo spends the rest of the night drinking, fighting and flirting with a saloon girl, Mildred (Robin Raymond).
The next morning, Bobo awakens on a bait barge belonging to Henry Hirota (Chester Gan) and his son Takeo (Victor Sen Yung). Henry explains they met while Bobo was drunk, and that Bobo agreed to work for him.
A policeman, George (Ralph Dunn), comes by because Pop Kelly (Arthur Aylesworth), a grumpy old sailor whom Bobo also met, was choked to death during the night. Bobo is horrified, for he fears that he may be the culprit.
Bobo and Nutsy (Claude Rains), a philosophical night watchman, are walking on the beach when they see a woman trying to drown herself. Bobo rescues her, then protects her from a policeman trying to arrest her for attempting suicide. The woman is a waitress, Anna (Ida Lupino), bitter about Bobo's interference.
Anna, who has led a hard life, cheers up the next day and cooks breakfast for Bobo. Bobo fixes Dr. Frank Brothers' (Jerome Cowan) boat. Bobo decides to stay in San Pablo and make a home with Anna. The couple decide to marry.
Tiny implies to Anna that Bobo killed Pop, and that if Anna does not let Bobo go, he will tell the police. Anna questions Bobo about his past and Tiny. Tiny helped Bobo once and has been living off him ever since.
The next day, Nutsy acts as Bobo's best man, and Reverend Wilson (Ralph Byrd) marries Bobo and Anna. Their celebration is cut short by Brothers, whose boat has broken again. Anna is upset by the arrival of Tiny, who is more drunk than usual. She offers to keep paying him money each week, but repulses his attempts to kiss her. Tiny keeps advancing, warning her that she cannot tell Bobo or else he will inform the police that Bobo killed Pop. As he talks, Anna realizes that it was Tiny, not Bobo, who killed Pop, and her accusations enrage him.
When Bobo and Brothers return, they find the badly beaten Anna and rush her to the hospital. Bobo chases Tiny out onto the water break, and Tiny is washed out to sea by the waves. Bobo then returns to the hospital, where Nutsy informs him that Brothers has sent for a specialist and that Anna will live. Later, Brothers brings Anna to the barge, and Bobo carries her over the threshold.
A 1942 American Black & White romantic drama thriller film directed by Archie Mayo and Fritz Lang (uncredited), produced by Mark Hellinger, screenplay by John O'Hara and Nunnally Johnson (uncredited), based on Willard Robertson's 1940 novel "Moon Tide", cinematography by Charles G. Clarke and Lucien Ballard (uncredited), starring Jean Gabin, Ida Lupino, Thomas Mitchell, Claude Rains, Jerome Cowan, Helene Reynolds, Ralph Byrd, William Halligan, Victor Sen Yung, Chester Gan, Robin Raymond, Arthur Aylesworth, Arthur Hohl, John Kelly, Ralph Dunn, Tully Marshall, and Tom Dugan.
Archie Mayo took over direction after the initial director, Fritz Lang, left the project early in the shooting schedule.
Charles G. Clarke was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Cinematography for black-and-white.
Moontide was meant to be a star-making vehicle for Gabin, who was celebrated in his home country, but obscure in the United States. The charismatic Gabin had been in a number of successful leading-man roles and had a hand in picking Robertson's story for adaptation to film. Willing to take a chance on him, Twentieth Century Fox bought the rights, despite the novel's themes of prostitution, rape, cannibalism and murder. The Motion Picture Production Code meant the studio had to drop most of the story. In the role of the nefarious Tiny, Mitchell was cast against type, having played Scarlet O'Hara's father in Gone with the Wind.
Soon after shooting began, director Fritz Lang left the project, rumored to be due to friction he had with Gabin regarding Marlene Dietrich, who had been involved with both men. It's not known which early footage is shot by Lang or replacement director Archie Mayo. The film's location on San Pablo Bay had to be scrapped after the attack on Pearl Harbor and the west coast was declared a security zone. A large studio set was filled with water for the barge scenes, giving the film an artificial, dream-like ambiance. The lighting, fog and wave effects, at times dingy and sinister or sparkling and romantic, led to Clarke's Oscar nomination for cinematography.
Surrealist Salvador Dalí was hired to create the drunken montage at the top of the story but his sketches were deemed too bizarre, and the scene was shot with only some of his influence (most likely the close-up of the clock, the headless woman) intact.
An illuminating link to one of the frequently overlooked sources of noir: the movement known as 'poetic realism', which flourished in France from the mid-1930s until the onslaught of war.