Fri 8 Aug 2014
A Movie Review by Jonathan Lewis: FOG OVER FRISCO (1934).
Posted by Steve under Crime Films , Reviews[15] Comments
FOG OVER FRISCO. First National Pictures, 1934. Bette Davis, Donald Woods, Margaret Lindsay, Lyle Talbot, Hugh Herbert, Arthur Byron, Robert Barrat, Henry O’Neill, Irving Pichel, Douglass Dumbrille, Alan Hale. Based on the novel The Five Fragments by George Dyer. Director: William Dieterle.
Sometimes a film starts off really well, with a promising plot, a stunning female lead, and an atmospheric San Francisco nightspot. There’s also a gangster, a goody two shoes stepsister, and a duped fiancé, all of whom vie for the deeply flawed protagonist’s attention. What’s not to like?
But then all of a sudden, about thirty minutes into the movie, things just quickly fall apart, leaving the movie feeling utterly rudderless. That’s the best way to describe Fog Over Frisco.
Based on a novel by George Dyer and directed by William Dieterle (The Life of Emile Zola), the movie stars Bette Davis as Arlene Bradford, a scheming socialite and femme fatale. She manipulates her fiancé, Spencer Carlton (Lyle Talbot), into a scheme involving a criminal lowlife and some stolen government securities. Her father, head of the brokerage firm where Spencer works, thinks Arlene’s rotten to the core. Her stepsister, Val (Margaret Lindsay), however, isn’t willing to give up on her. (Full story: https://www.aktienboard.com/aktien-apps/)
Davis is nearly perfect for the part of the scheming Arlene, portraying the doomed protagonist as a liar, schemer, and classic manipulator. You kind of start actually liking her, even though you know she’s up to no good whatsoever. Then she disappears from the film for a few minutes, leaving you wondering where she went and where the film’s headed.
And then you get your answer. She’s been killed, leaving the film without its best character. In contrast to an extremely focused first half, the second half of Fog Over Frisco is one big muddled affair with stock footage of car chases, too many characters, and no Bette Davis. It’s fast moving, but it doesn’t go anywhere.
Who could the murderer be? Her fiancé, her sleazy gangster friend, and even her on-the-side love interest are all possible suspects, but it’s difficult to care. Somewhere along the way, the stepsister Val gets kidnapped, an intrepid newsman gets involved with the case, and it turns out Arlene had a secret husband who used to live in Los Angeles. If it sounds far too complex for a film with a running time of sixty-eight minutes, it’s because it is.
In conclusion, Fog Over Frisco starts off extremely promising, but ends feeling like just another convoluted and mediocre B-film mystery with some ridiculous plot devices thrown in to explain away a clumsy story. As far as the fog alluded to in the title, there’s a bit here and there, but really nothing to justify its usage beyond a marketing device.
All told, it’s an average, if not below average, suspense film with little to recommend it beyond Davis’s great, albeit abbreviated, performance.
August 8th, 2014 at 7:39 pm
I agree with everything you say about this one, but I watch it as a fast moving B, for the curiosity of seeing a pre star Davis in a good performance, and because it plays like a serial more than a feature and enjoy it more. Actually it received decent critical attention and is considered one worth seeing by many collectors and fans,
If nothing else I like that for once Robert Barratt didn’t do it.
But then I read the book and while it is more coherent it is still more Edgar Wallace than Ellery Queen.
But it you don’t try too hard to follow the plot, it certainly doesn’t have many slow spots.
I have always found Dieterle an interesting director to follow though more than one of his films have the same problems you point out here I think dating back to Germany and those long incredibly complex films and serials from the silent era when directors got paid part of the profit from each theater’s showing and being a long movie with no other features meant you didn’t have to share (the reason Lang’s early films are so long).
August 8th, 2014 at 8:31 pm
I haven’t seen this picture, but from your description it sounds like they had to make up the second half of a movie, after their lead actor disappeared from the set. Which makes me think, was she sick, did she run off, or was there another movie that the studio wanted her to work on? A quick look at Bette Davis’s filmography at IMDB.com makes me think that this last is what might have happened. A glance through a Bette Davis biography might also support my theory. But the movie listed as the one that Davis appeared in right after ‘Fog Over Frisco’ was ‘Of Human Bondage,’ with Leslie Howard. An important movie at the time, which would certainly be remembered as a star turn for the up and coming Davis. So, her character abruptly disappears from the low budget Frisco movie,with Lyle Talbot & Margret Lindsay, because the actor was needed to make a career establishing performance on the set of the more important movie starring Leslie Howard.
August 8th, 2014 at 8:52 pm
That’s a plausible scenario, but I’m going to have to take a look at a Bette Davis biography next time I’m in a bookstore that has one. It really was noticeable how quickly the film’s plot fell apart once she disappeared. Unless the script was written years ago for “just another B-film actress” and no one expected that the protagonist/victim would be such a strong lead. The second half of the film really doesn’t have a lead character; it has many semi-lead characters, including Alan Hale as a police chief
August 8th, 2014 at 10:35 pm
Apparently, Davis accepted the smaller part as a strategic move within the company. Margaret Lindsay was the true leading lady. Quite good story on the TCM site regarding this. Lyle Talbot was, according to TCM, astounded at Davis’s concentration and hard work…well, she may have been on to something. Whoever wrote the article who quite sarcastic about Lyle’s career.
August 8th, 2014 at 11:02 pm
Thanks for the tip, Barry. Here’s the link to the TCM write-up about the film:
http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article/84065|0/Fog-Over-Frisco.html
I just finished watching this one myself. Jon is right. Soon after Bette disappeared, I didn’t find much of interest left to watch. Just an ordinary B-movie whodunit, except that while I tried, I discovered fairly quickly that I really didn’t care.
August 8th, 2014 at 11:04 pm
I don’t know how to make that link work. You can either copy and paste, or Google
tcm frisco fog
and that should do it.
August 8th, 2014 at 11:08 pm
I suspect Davis saw a chance to get screen time, get seen, work a short period, and perhaps even show up every one else in the film. And it isn’t as if at this point in her career she chose her projects, she likely took what came along and saw in this one a chance to be seen.
It was some time and a great many hits later that she, de Haviland, or Cagney declared their independence from Warners.
It isn’t like Errol Flynn chose to be a corpse in a Perry Mason movie either. He took the money.
Lyle Talbot was always an odd choice as leading man to me, and certainly as serial hero, yet when his son produced a special on Dashiell Hammett to go along with the release of HAMMETT, it was Lyle who he had read passages as the Op and I did notice how well he would have been cast in that role.
I did think he was usually well cast as the second lead, the male ingénue in so many mystery films or dramas, though he never looked young enough on film to me for the college types he played.
August 8th, 2014 at 11:09 pm
http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/2449/Fog-over-Frisco/
August 8th, 2014 at 11:11 pm
Talbot’s character isn’t in the film all that much — maybe he’s on screen for a total of 5-8 minutes. (He’s talked about quite a bit, though). Once he’s found dead, the police basically have the attitude of “well, that’s that.” And so does the viewer
August 9th, 2014 at 5:32 am
Dan Stumpf reviewed book and film some years ago here:
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=9663
August 9th, 2014 at 8:50 am
Yes, you’re right. Thanks for uncovering that old review. It had slipped my mind. There are over 4000 posts on this blog now, and it’s getting tougher and tougher to remember them all.
In any case, if anyone would like another point of view, Dan liked the movie better than either Jon or I did. He’s busy attending PulpFest this weekend, otherwise I imagine he might have chimed in himself by now.
August 9th, 2014 at 12:10 pm
I don’t remember posts on MYSTERY*FILE or elsewhere either.
Who could?
Instead, I’ve been busy adding links the last few years from my history-of-mystery website to posts on MYSTERY*FILE.
There must be over 100 such links by now, maybe a lot more.
This allows my readers to learn about the important information in MYSTERY*FILE.
Dan Stumpf’s post is linked from my George Dyer article.
Editorial comment: People in our society really need to know about the material available about the arts, science, history etc. It’s eye-opening and wonderful!
So I link to it whenever I can.
August 10th, 2014 at 4:34 pm
Mike,
Let me give more than a nod to your website as well. Even when I disagree I enjoy reading your insights, and more often than not you are right — or at least I agree with you meaning we are wrong together at least.
I especially think your take on the Van Dine school is one of the most enlightened and fairest I’ve read. By the time literary criticism in the genre was well started a reaction had set in against the Van Dine school and Haycraft and a few others were just aped in relation to Vance and Van Dine and his followers in critical terms dismissing them as popular but more or less a dead end.
You and I are likely among the few to recognize the faults of the school, but at the same time how radical of a sea change it was in the genre in terms of social and stylistic innovation. It is by far the most racially enlightened school up to its time and beyond for quite a while and outsized as Vance, Colt, and the early Queen may be there is a surprising attempt to document and lend credence to their investigations that would be exploited later by the police procedural (being born around the same time), and whether critics want to admit it or not there would be no Nero Wolfe without Vance, a fact Stout virtually admitted to.
August 10th, 2014 at 8:19 pm
David,
Thank you very much! Your comments are genuinely encouraging.
August 11th, 2014 at 4:18 am
Loved Bette Davis in this, but the film loses steam when she exits.