Karry Best movie of this year hands down!

LouHomey From my favorite movies..

Onlinewsma Absolutely Brilliant!

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

roslein-674-874556 This movie is very confused. Let's start with the miscasting. The main character is a young man whose father was hanged for murder when he was a baby and who all his life has been ridiculed and mistrusted by the other residents of his small town, who think criminality is hereditary. It's a part that calls for a handsome, charismatic, troubled actor like Dean or Brando. But who do we get? Dane Clark, with the profile of a water vole and the attitude of a schlep. Instead of being dangerously, broodingly resentful, he is so whiny that one thinks, well why didn't you ever move away, then?In other parts, Harry Morgan, that byword for dry drollness, plays a deaf mute who is also simpleminded (oh, the pathos!), and the majestic Rex Ingram is given one of those awful condescending roles, the Wise Negro Hermit of saintly demeanor who lives in the woods and comforts the troubled. The sweet-natured, charming Allan Joslyn plays a grumpy sheriff who is permanently unshaven. On top of this, Clark's character rapidly wears out whatever welcome he might have by repeating his mistakes so often and so carelessly that whatever sympathy we might have turns to exasperation. And though he is a sorehead with no prospects, and not good-looking or sexy, the girl falls madly in love with him as soon as he kisses her, even though she is engaged to a handsome, rich boy with a completely different character. None of this makes any sense, and the filmmakers didn't seem to know what they were doing--right after we are trying to shiver ourselves out of a scene of gruesome violence, we are in a dance hall, where the bandstand crooner sings the romantic title song that one is not exactly in the mood to hear. I bet that tune never troubled the Top 40!

Robert J. Maxwell It opens with a prisoner being hanged, dissolves to footsteps through a night-time forest, to a baby crying in the shadow of a dangling toy, to a brawl in which a gang of kids smears mud on the face of an age-mate, to a brutal fist fight between two grown men, with each blow landing with a loud THWACK on the snot locker of the other, ending with somebody's head being bashed in repeatedly with a rock. Lloyd Bridges is on screen for about 50 seconds before he becomes a corpse. Ditto, Harry Carey Jr. The sequence ends with the mangling of a borrowed car and its occupants. Don't worry, though. There's no blood. We Americans don't like violence.Gail Russell is not only beautiful and sexy, with her mane of wavy black hair and pale eyes framed by dark lashes. She's girlishly breathless and vulnerable, in real life as well as on the screen. Her character here is candid without being insulting. She's tender, empathic, nurturant, devoted to the man she loves, filled with principle and virtue, flawless in fact, just like my ex wife.But, if you ask me, she has poor taste in men. First she's hooked up with the barbaric Bridges and then, when he's hors de combat, she falls for Dane Clark, a guy whose demeanor always suggests a pustule about to pop, on top of which he's not much of an actor. The romance between Russell and Clark just doesn't click. Warners had tried setting him up as a replacement for Humphrey Bogart. What a laugh. Clark was most at home in ensembles, as in "Destination Tokyo." Speaking of amusement, the only time Dane Clark smiles in the entire movie is when he picks up a puppy and snuggles it. That suggests that inside that terrifying exterior he's really cotton candy. The only friend he has is an avuncular old black man who lives in a dilapidated bungalow on the edge of the water.Well, the question that plagues Clark is that he's a murderer in a small Virginia tidewater town and the perceptive sheriff (a nicely measured performance by Allyn Joslin) comes to suspect him. Should he run away, now that he's a murderer like his old man? Or, since it was Bridges who threw the first stone, should Clark turn himself in and plead self defense? It was produced by the notorious bonehead and cheat, Herbert J. Yates, at Republic Pictures. That means low budget. The art director has done what he could to suggest a Southern swamp but it's all obviously studio bound. But Russell's photography is very good, and the director isn't afraid to take some chances. The silhouettes, the sometimes hallucinatory dissolves, the tendency of the camera to linger on the hands of a conversant, twisting a handkerchief, tend to give the images a dreamy quality.None of that is enough to lift the movie out of the doldrums, though. It's a routine melodrama with psychological overtones. The plot is pretty sloppy. What's the deal with the knife that Clark left at the scene of the crime (a public place) and that is found later by the deaf-mute and retarded Harry Morgan? Or Henry Morgan. He couldn't seem to make up his mind about his name. He should have simply called himself H. H. Morgan. At any rate, he has the most startling moment on the screen, when Clark begins to strangle him and Morgan, without resisting, raises his eyes to the roof and opens his mouth wide, like a fish's, in a silent howl.Best exchange in the movie. Sheriff: "All I know is that there's a lot more to a human being than what you cut up down at the morgue." Coroner: "Not when they're dead."

Michael Neumann The claustrophobic atmosphere of a studio bayou provides the visual attraction in this subdued but stylish melodrama, a parable of guilt and redemption set in a small, backwoods Southern town. The hero is a pathetic young man unable to cope with the memory of his dead father, who was executed for murder while his son was still an infant. Driven by the tainting and teasing of his peers, he commits a similar crime of his own, disposing the body in the local swamp. A fondness for his victim's girlfriend further disrupts his already fragile emotional equilibrium, but up until the final scenes the film is distinguished by a welcome lack of clichés or histrionics.

dbdumonteil During all his childhood ,Danny had only known ragging.Being the son of a hanged man was not easy when your school pals kept laughing at you.We can comprehend Danny's hate for Jerry Snykes ,the boy born silver spoon in hand ,whose father is a banker .The resentment had been building up for years.Not only Danny was an innocent victim ,but he also showed compassion for the half-wit,the town youth's punching bag.As grandma says,he is a good guy ,and so was his father,another unfortunate victim of fate .When Danny tries to join the human race,that is to say when he falls in love with Gilly ,it's too late: "why do you always take me far from the others?" she complains.The scene at the fair could be a respite : this is a place dear to Borzage;you may remember Margaret Sullavan on a carousel in "little man what now? " and there's a similar scene in "Liliom" .But the big wheel is also a trap.Filmed in black and white ,often in the dark,in a desperate atmosphere ,"Moonrise" is an extraordinary film noir.It nearly matched the brilliance of Borzage's precedent decade.