Watch Clash by Night For Free

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

Purely Joyful Movie!

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

The title of Fritz Lang's Clash by Night and its placement in his filmography might lead you to expect a film noir, and a couple of its characters (played by Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Ryan) express themselves almost entirely through noir-soaked barbs and aphorisms, reflecting the tortured worldviews beneath. But they're heavily displaced from noir territory (Ryan's character works as a projectionist, a neat evocation of such displacement), set down in a fishing village, both reeling from recent bumpy emotional rides. The film starts by immersing us in the ships, the unloading of the catch, the processing, the surrounding culture, and never loses its sense of that setting; at other times, in its growing sense of domesticity as prison and in the expressiveness of its interiors, it feels like Douglas Sirk as much as Lang. Despite her better judgment, Stanwyck's May gives in to the pursuit of fishing captain Jerry (Paul Douglas), a man too decently straightforward to arouse her interest, and tries to make it as a wife and mother; it's inevitable that his self-loathing friend Earl (Ryan) will eventually constitute a more interesting proposition. The movie teems with portrayals of flawed masculinity - old drunks, younger men with overly fixed ideas about what they expect of their women; it also has Marilyn Monroe as Stanwyck's main female confidant, astute enough to see her point of view, but not to avoid similar traps. Whether one categorizes it as noir or domestic melodrama or an amalgam of both, it's a compellingly articulated study, with a "happy" ending (at least in the sense that it tends to the imperatives of domesticity and continuity over those of uncertain desire) so compromised and understated that it allows no clear winners. In this sense, as in Lang's greatest films, the implications run wide and deep, to a clash and a night that may never end.

. . . had to write essays about how THEY thought a short story called "The Lady or the Tiger" REALLY ended. He said that he always thought that there was a Tiger behind the Green Door. It seems that CLASH BY NIGHT--also from the 1900s--has an ambiguous "Lady or Tiger" conclusion as well. Though Brutish Sardiner Jerry SAYS that Baby Gloria is sleeping, there are absolutely NO baby sounds coming from the other room below decks on this movie's soundtrack. This leaves viewers to wonder exactly WHAT greets life-long wanton strumpet Mae when this adulterous mommy ventures behind her own Green Door. Is it a preternaturally quiet babe sleeping safe and sound, as the Cuckolded Papa Jerry has suggested? Or has this bear of a man been exposed to one DANGEROUS LIAISON too many, and gone all Glenn Close over Mae's FATAL ATTRACTION? (Only this time it's not RABBIT stew simmering in the cook pot.) It's hard to guess how the Papal Reps controlling America's censor board in 1952 would have resolved this conundrum, had they not been too preoccupied molesting all the local lads.

Considering this is directed by Fritz Lang and features a good cast, I was expecting something better than a one-dimensional soaper. The story is about a woman (Barbara Stanwyck) who reluctantly returns to her seaside hometown to live with her brother. She also reluctantly dates and then marries fisherman Paul Douglas. She further reluctantly enters into an affair with misogynist Robert Ryan. She does pretty much everything reluctantly. She's terrible but conflicted about it. That was the style at the time.At 45, Stanwyck is a little old for the part but she does fine with it. The studio system was faltering at this time and no great movie stars of the level of Stanwyck, Davis, or Crawford had risen to take their place. So the '50s often saw middle-aged actresses playing younger roles with often mixed results. There is one rising star here and that's a young Marilyn Monroe. She looks beautiful and does well in her supporting part. The movie's highlights all center around her. The men all do good jobs but again, these are rather clichéd soap opera parts so I hesitate to throw a party for them. Douglas and Ryan both play to type and do so well. The opening credits end with "And introducing Keith Andes." Who's Keith Andes? Exactly. He plays Stanwyck's brother and Marilyn's boyfriend. He does nothing to impress or offend. All of the acting feels very stagey. When I found out this was originally a play I wasn't surprised. Lang does what he can to make a picture out of it but the script offers little help. This is not a film noir, as it is often advertised, but rather a melodrama. So noir fans prepare yourselves before watching. Overall it's a watchable soap with a hollow ending that I won't be watching again.

Although available in Warner Bros Film Noir Classics collection this is not a noir movie by any stretch of that term. Both Stanwyck and Ryan have appeared in noirs and Fritz Lang has made some classics of the genre, but this is solid melodrama. For me there were several reasons for liking and disliking this movie: Pro: Stanwyck and Ryan are outstanding as usual, Marilyn Monroe pleasant and performing well enough, the dialogs are frequently sharp and revealing and Lang's directing make it almost feel noirish. Contra: Paul Douglas' performance is way, way over the top and his character too good for this wicked world. The other supporting actors would also be more at home in a Frank Capra feel-good story. Also you constantly wait for the movie to catch fire, but it just sizzles along to a disappointing ending. Conclusion: worthwhile, but don't get your expectations up too high. And please don't call it noir.