“There ain’t enough dignity in the world.”
Borzage’s
rich filmography was often concerned with the triumph of love over adversity, a
theme that resonated during the interwar years. Although this forms part of the
narrative curve of his celebrated bayou noir, the film defies easy
categorisation due to its beguiling dream state –atmospherically akin to Night of the Hunter– and focus on an
embittered character forced, he feels, to shoulder responsibility for the sins
of his father. At its core Moonrise
is a crime story in which we are invited into the fractured mind of the
perpetrator. The director achieves this using techniques gleaned from the
expressionistic style of F.W. Murnau, who resided at Fox at the same time as
Borzage.
The
opening sequence exemplifies this visual approach. We see the laboured movement
of feet towards a gallows. A man is hanged, in oppressively deep shadow. A toy
hangs above the infant Danny Hawkins’ cot, an image that should be comforting
but, within the context of the surrounding scenes, has been rendered macabre.
The schoolyard refrain, “Danny Hawkins’ dad was hanged,” then carries over into
the drama proper. Danny– Dane Clark striking the perfect balance of melancholia
and defensiveness – now a psychologically wounded young man, meets rich upstart
Jerry Sykes (Lloyd Bridges) at the edge of Brother’s Pond, where Jerry warns
Danny to stay away from school teacher Gilly Johnson, in whom both men have an
interest. When the taunts turn to physical violence, Danny is forced to defend
himself and brings a rock down on Jerry’s head. With nobody to bear witness to
Jerry’s death, Danny is left to wrestle with his conscience.
Guilt is now added to Danny’s millstones of loneliness and isolation. This psychological bind manifests visually during a car journey with Gilly and a couple of friends. Suddenly confronted by hallucinations of Jerry, Danny swerves and rolls the car. All passengers survive, but it is further evidence of Danny’s mental instability. His romantic relationship with Gilly compounds his troubles– the knowledge that Jerry was also her suitor arouses suspicions in kind-hearted Sheriff Otis. Danny’s pursuit of Gilly – played with resigned nervousness by Russell –borders on harassment; the fact that she allows him to court her is hard to swallow for a modern audience and this marginally hinders the film’s ethereal but humanistic atmosphere.
Danny’s bedrocks – friendships that occasionally shelter him from the swirling emotions he has experienced from infancy – are slow-witted deaf-mute Billy and black sage Mose. Rex Ingram gives a profoundly dignified performance as the intuitive hermit, who concedes that he has “resigned from the human race” after once seeing a man hunted by dogs. Harry Morgan’s Billy generates perhaps the most audience sympathy, especially in a moving scene when Danny viciously turns on him in a panicked attempt to locate the whereabouts of the knife he had dropped at the scene of the crime. Billy’s inability to incriminate as well as the fact he bears no enmity towards his friend become further lessons in Danny’s journey to self-determination.
The
mostly studio-bound nocturnal scenes are full of haunting and symbolic imagery,
not least on a racoon hunt when, approaching Brother’s Pond, the shot cuts from
Danny’s angst-ridden face to the bandit eyes of one of the creatures. At a town
fair, Danny and Gilly’s ride on a Ferris wheel turns into a dizzying, paranoid
nightmare as the sheriff follows them round, until Danny leaps from the top.
With this death-defying jump in mind, it throws up the eerie possibility that
the final reel –focusing on Danny’s flight and eventual atonement – is a
point-of-death fantasy. However one interprets it, in Danny’s world of
infringing shadows, to finally forge his own destiny, however imperfect that
may be, is a more illuminating proposition than to continue blaming his father
for his destiny – someone who is a long time dead.
Clark Hodgkiss
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