Edward G. Robinson Archives | Deep Focus Review

The Sea Wolf

Brian Eggert — Thu, 26 Jun 2025 14:07:25 +0000

Wolf Larsen, the barbarous, intelligent, and vengeful despot who clings to his authority with cruelty and violence, is the unforgettable villain of 1941’s The Sea Wolf. Edward G. Robinson delivers a combustible performance that dominates the film, just as Larsen dominates his ship, the Ghost. A distinguished entry in Warner Bros.’s many literary adaptations of the era, this film version of Jack London’s novel features a richly baroque visual aesthetic and Oscar-nominated special effects, overseen by the brilliant direction of Michael Curtiz, a taskmaster himself. However, the picture’s voice stems from the talented screenwriter and actors, mindful of how the events onscreen mirrored their contemporary political dynamics. Like many historical and literary adaptations made by Warner Bros. during this period, The Sea Wolf is an anti-Nazi film that never mentions Nazism and an anti-Hitler film that presents a fictional counterpart to Hitler. It supplies a passionate message against the fascist ideologies that fuel authoritarians, and at a time when it mattered most. The Sea Wolf is at once a sterling example of prestige filmmaking in the Golden Age of Hollywood and an impassioned work that demonstrates how even commercial art can have a perspective. The full 4,500-word essay is currently […]

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Confessions of a Nazi Spy

Brian Eggert — Tue, 14 Mar 2023 12:55:36 +0000

(Note: Warner Archive has released Confessions of a Nazi Spy on Blu-ray for the first time. Order the disc from Amazon here.) Before the Japanese Imperial Army attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the United States maintained an isolationist stance about the war in Europe and the looming menace of Nazism. After Adolf Hitler took power over Germany in 1933, rumors spread of his Nazi party’s anti-Semitic agenda. The Nazi threat to the world became more evident with the Anschluss of Austria in 1938. Still, the US kept out of the conflict. Even so, Hollywood studios found veiled ways of confronting fascism, most commonly through allusion and historical parallels. But Anatole Litvak’s Confessions of a Nazi Spy marked a defining moment by speaking out against Nazism directly. Produced in 1939 by Warner Bros., the first studio to take an active anti-Nazi stance in the US and abroad, the film is the earliest example of a major studio confronting “Hitlerism”—just one of the many isms to be referenced in the film alongside “gangsterism” and in contrast to “Americanism.” Such ideological rhetoric prevails in many of the anti-Nazi films of the pre-Pearl Harbor period, including pictures that equate the gangsterism of domestic fascist […]

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The Stranger

Brian Eggert — Thu, 25 Jul 2019 05:00:11 +0000

Orson Welles felt The Stranger was his own worst film. Released in 1946, it was made, in part, to prove to Hollywood that Welles could be profitable after his string of financial disappointments at RKO, and to live up to his promise and reputation as the wunderkind of the Mercury Theater. Needing a payday, Welles resolved to work within the constraints of a melodramatic Hollywood thriller and, in the years to come, he maintained some animosity toward the film because it meant he had sold out. But it proved, for the first and only time in Welles’ career, that the director could conform to Hollywood expectations and deliver a financial success. Given the impetus of the project, it certainly registers as more conventional than other films by the maverick auteur, whose works often look and feel like they were made by a Hollywood outsider (they were). And so, he remained The Stranger’s harshest critic, although critics and historians have since reassessed the film as more unorthodox than it may have initially seemed. If The Stranger’s virtuoso camerawork and frantic pacing, both of which were atypical when compared to the traditional studio style, were not enough to demonstrate that it’s more […]

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Double Indemnity

Brian Eggert — Sat, 19 Mar 2016 00:00:27 +0000

Insurance salesman Walter Neff’s mind isn’t so much on renewing his client’s automobile policy as landing the man’s blonde bombshell wife, Phyllis. She first appears to Walter at the top of the staircase, wrapped in nothing more than a towel. When she finally joins Walter downstairs, they exchange a few keen flirtations in the California sunlight, which streams through the Venetian blinds, illuminating the room’s dust and splashing bold horizontal shadows onto the walls and furniture. After another meeting like this one, their casual flirtation shifts to planning a murder. A tale of lust and greed delivered with a careful balance of elegance and vulgarity, Double Indemnity is based on the 1935 novel by James M. Cain. Billy Wilder directs and, alongside his co-writer Raymond Chandler, he adapted the book into something far more vibrant and smooth than the source material. Murder, sex, and greed saturate the screen, which the 1944 film steeps in film noir aesthetics, brazen wickedness, and cunning dialogue. Sharp shadows represent the chiaroscuro moral leaps made by the protagonists, neither of whom would have made such leaps alone without the other to encourage them. Miklos Rosa’s winding score ties the viewer up in the suspense. And […]

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