The Sea Wolf
Directed by Michael Curtiz
Written by Robert Rosson from a novel by Jack London
1941/US
Warner Bros.
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime rental
“I turned to the circle of brutal and malignant faces peering at me through the semi-darkness. A sudden and deep sympathy welled up in me. I remembered the Cockney’s way of putting it. How God must have hated them that they should be tortured so!”
― Jack London, The Sea-Wolf).
Curtiz made several iconic movies about life at sea. This is one.
This is an adaptation of the Jack London novel. The story begins in San Francisco. George Leach (John Garfield) and Ruth Brewster (Ida Lupino) are fugitives from justice. Humphrey van Weyden (Alexander Knox) is a writer and philosopher with a more mysterious reason to wander. These people wind up booking passage on a sealer “The Ghost” which is captained by the iron-willed and cruel “Wolf” Larson (Edward G. Robertson) . Leach and Brewter fall in love almost immediately.
The wanted trio try desperately to get off the ship but Wolf insists they will remain on board and the ship will not put into port until it returns to San Francisco. With Barry Fitzgerald as the ship’s cook and Gene Lockhart as its pathetic drunken doctor.
This is a solidly mounted production with a beautiful score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold and atmospheric cinematography by Sol Polito. And what a cast! This was supposed to be some sort of Hitler analogy but I didn’t pick up on that.
