Zoooma An American film starring Jean Gabin? Who's Jean Gabin? An amazing actor, that's who! But I had no idea prior to watching this. Apparently he was a huge star in France, he came to Hollywood for two films before entering World War II where he earned two medals fighting the Nazis for the Free French Forces. His two American films did not fare well at the box office but this one is quite a gem. The great Fritz Lang began filming and is uncredited as director for some scenes. The film was also nominated for Best Black & White Cinematography. Gabin is wonderful as is the female lead, Ida Lupino. Outstanding acting and a story so well directed! Absolutely recommended!7.2 / 10 stars--Zoooma, a Kat Pirate Screener!

ZenVortex This interesting and surprisingly effective 1941 movie was one of the first films noir. Partly directed by Fritz Lang -- who quit after a few weeks due to a conflict with Jean Gabin, who was romancing Lang's ex-girlfriend Marlene Dietrich -- and featuring an international cast with creative input by Salvador Dali (!), the movie is a seminal work that helped establish some of the stylistic elements of classic film noir.The lovely 28 year-old British actress Ida Lupino delivers a convincing performance as a suicidal teenage runaway, aimlessly passing through a Californian fishing village on her journey to nowhere.French actor Jean Gabin exudes charm and star quality as a womanizing drifter with an insane capacity for hard liquor, who gets into drunken fights that he doesn't remember. Claude Rains and Thomas Mitchell round out the main characters with solid performances as Gabin's drinking buddies -- Rains as a failed British intellectual and Mitchell as a scheming Irish villain who is blackmailing Gabin. Dali's contribution to the movie is a startling scene where the drunken Gabin is conversing with a pretty prostitute whose head suddenly vanishes into thin air -- transforming her into a talking torso with surrealist images of spinning clocks.The direction is generally good. The cinematography is classic noir, especially the final scenes, which deliver an abundance of dark, haunting images as Gabin menacingly pursues Mitchell along the pier to his death. The Fox Film Noir DVD consists of a flawless high-quality print plus special features.

robert-temple-1 Here we have the 28 year-old Ida Lupino, looking more like 19 or 20, and already the veteran of more than thirty films, being a frail, charming, and vulnerable waif. She is thoroughly convincing, and we would all like to take her in and look after her. This duty falls to the gruff Jean Gabin, a hard-drinking waterfront drifter from port to port, who has at some point arrived in the States from France. In fact, Gabin in real life had fled the Nazi Occupation and this was one of two American films which he made in exile. The film was supposed to be directed by Fritz Lang, who would have made it a moodier and darker piece. However, he was replaced by the more cheerful Archie Mayo, so we get a film whose real value is not as cinema but as encounter between Lupino and Gabin. That keeps us watching. Claude Rains gives bemused support as a California waterfront bum (hardly his usual type of role!) and Thomas Mitchell is an unctuous, scheming villain who has conned Gabin into thinking he has 'something on him'. The film is rather sinister, and in many ways pointless. If it weren't for Lupino and Gabin being so fascinating, nobody would bother to watch this movie, as it falls between many stools. But Lupino is so entrancing in this role, that presumably no one really cares about the story anyway. And listening to Jean Gabin speak heavily accented English in California is so extraordinary that one wants to watch that too. Who gives a damn about the film, we've got Lupino and Gabin, and that's all that matters. They could read the telephone directory as far as I am concerned, and I would still watch.

sol ***SPOILER*** You've got to hand it to BoBo the Sailorman , Jean Gabin, he knows what he wants and goes all out to get it no matter what the dangers and consequence's are. BoBo's heavy drinking and non-stop womanizing would have lead to a situation that would have gotten him locked up behind bars or in an early grave. That is until that fateful evening when BoBo ran into Anna, Ida Lupino, on he beach outside of San Pablo. Young and pretty Anna tired to pull of a "Star is Born" like suicide walk into the Pacific Ocean where a gallant and, for once, sober BoBo saved her life. Taking Anna into his docked fishing boat, as well as home, Bobo soon falls for the sweet and confused woman after she cooked him up eggs easy side up, just the way he likes them.More or less a rootless and solitary traveling man BoBo gets hooked on Anna and decides to settle down and marry her. It's then when things get a bit strained with BoBo's friend Tiny, Thomas Mitchell, feeling that Anna is breaking up a beautiful friendship, him & BoBo, and decides to put the screws on both BoBo and his future bride.Tiny had planned to travel with BoBo upstate from the little dinky sea-town of San Pablo to bigger and better things in beautiful and scenic San Francisco. With Anna coming on the scene Tiny is now forced to travel, with no money for transportation, upstate alone and in his mind this just is not to happen as long as he can help it. It turns out that during his last drunken episode BoBo lost his memory in what he did the last 12 or so hours. It was during that lost time in BoBo's life a friend of his Old Pop Kelly, Arthur Aylesworth, was found strangled to death. It also turned out that Pop's sailor cap was found by BoBo's and Tiny's friend Nutsy, Clude Rains, in BoBo's boat!Tiny knowing how both crazy and powerful BoBo is when he's on the sauce, he once killed a man in self-defense while being dead drunk, is sure that BoBo did Old Pop Kelly in. With that knowledge at his disposal Tiny plans to blackmail BoBo into dropping his future bride Anna and go off to the city by the bay with him as his life-long gofer and parasite; Tiny has been living off BoBo's earning as a sailor and longshoreman for some ten years.One thing that soon comes out about this strange relationship, Tiny & BoBo, is that Bobo isn't the only one of the hard-drinking pair who has a habit of drinking himself into never-never land. Tiny also can put it away by the bottle, not just the shot-glass, an is a bit less restrained then BoBo is when he's out cold from an all night drinking session.**SPOILER ALERT***In fact where exactly was Tiny when Pop Kelly was strangled to death? That's the question that Anna asked a barley on his feet, from drinking, Tiny as he crashed into her and BoBo's boat on their wedding night! Bobo, an excellent mechanic, being away at the time fixing his friend Dr. Brothers',Jerome Cowan, boat came too late to save Anna, who was left beaten and unconscious, from Tiny's drunken actions. But an angry and uncontrollable BoBo wasn't too late to track Tiny down, on the sea rocks, and have him pay for everything he did with the raging waters of the Pacific Ocean doing the job for himThe relationship between BoBo and Tiny was far more interesting then that of BoBo's and Anna. I got the impression that Tiny was really interested in BoBo as a, without going any deeper into the subject, partner in life more then anything else. Being with BoBo for years Tiny got very attached to the hard drinking sailor and his sudden, after being a free man all these years, wanting to get married and settle down may have well been too much for poor confused, as well as feeling rejected, Tiny to take.