Clash by Night Blu-ray - Barbara Stanwyck / Robert Ryan

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S E A R C H D V D B e a v e r

USA 1952

Mae Doyle is a good-time girl, but now times are bad. Weary of too much booze and too many men, she returns to her girlhood home, the fishing village of Monterey, California. There she finds security as the wife of a devoted and dull fisherman - and passion in the arms of his provocative best friend. Film noir master Fritz Lang (The Big Heat, Ministry of Fear) directs four towering talents - Barbara Stanwyck, Paul Douglas, Robert Ryan and rising star Marilyn Monroe - in a stark tale of lives burnished by human emotion and shattered by human failings. Intense and powerfully realistic, Clash by Night (from a Clifford Odets play) is about many towns, many families. Serene on the surface. Roiling with desperation underneath.

***

Clifford Odets' original play was a hoary item of Broadway neo-realism in the Arthur Miller vein: a 'mature' study of a cynical woman's adultery with an equally cynical man. Lang and his producer Jerry Wald transposed the setting from Staten Island to a small fishing village, and had the brilliant idea of grounding the characters in a documentary on the community industry, giving them a substance never intrinsic in the script. What follows is a very Langian picture of the dangerous undercurrents in emotional relationships, excellently acted by the three principals, interestingly counterpointed by Marilyn Monroe (in her first major role) and Keith Andes as uninhibited young lover.

Excerpt from TimeOut located HERE

Posters

Theatrical Release: May 28th, 1952

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Review: Warner Archive - Region FREE - Blu-ray

Box Cover		CLICK to order from: Bonus Captures:
Distribution	Warner Archive - Region FREE - Blu-ray
Runtime	1:44:59.293
Video	1.37:1 1080P Dual-layered Blu-ray Disc Size: 32,928,927,608 bytes Feature: 32,011,517,952 bytes Video Bitrate: 34.99 Mbps Codec: MPEG-4 AVC Video
	NOTE: The Vertical axis represents the bits transferred per second. The Horizontal is the time in minutes.
Bitrate Blu-ray:
Audio	DTS-HD Master Audio English 1769 kbps 2.0 / 48 kHz / 1769 kbps / 24-bit (DTS Core: 2.0 / 48 kHz / 1509 kbps / 24-bit) Commentary: DTS-HD Master Audio English 1628 kbps 2.0 / 48 kHz / 1628 kbps / 24-bit (DTS Core: 2.0 / 48 kHz / 1509 kbps / 24-bit)
Subtitles	English (SDH), None
Features	Release Information: Studio: Warner Archive 1.37:1 1080P Dual-layered Blu-ray Disc Size: 32,928,927,608 bytes Feature: 32,011,517,952 bytes Video Bitrate: 34.99 Mbps Codec: MPEG-4 AVC Video Edition Details: • Commentary by filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich, with audio interview excerpts of director Fritz Lang • Trailer (2:25) Blu-ray Release Date: May 2nd, 2023 Standard Blu-ray Case Chapters 31

Comments:

NOTE: The below Blu-ray captures were taken directly from the Blu-ray disc.

ADDITION: Warner Archive Blu-ray (July 2023): Warner Archive have transferred Fritz Lang's Clash by Night to Blu-ray. The 2006 DVD was initially a part of Warner's Film Noir Classic Collection: Volume 2, reviewed HERE. That was a suitable SD image but the 1080P advances in very pleasingly (see comparison captures below) with superior contrast, improved detail etc. It has no speckles or damage and looked great on my system.

NOTE: We have added 70 more large resolution Blu-ray captures (in lossless PNG format) for DVDBeaver Patrons HERE

Warner Archive use a DTS-HD Master dual-mono track (24-bit) in the original English language. Clash by Night has conflicts, crashing ocean waves and yelling maintaining the authentic mono flatness with a touch of depth. The score is by composer Roy Webb, who has hundreds of film music credits to his name, mainly with RKO Pictures including Crossfire, The Ghost Ship, Bedlam, I Married a Witch, This Is Cinerama, Easy Living, The Window, Fixed Bayonets, Journey Into Fear, I Walked with a Zombie etc. sounding flat, clean and wonderfully dramatic in the lossless transfers. Warner Archive offer optional English (SDH), yellow, subtitles on their Region FREE Blu-ray.

The Warner Archive Blu-ray offers the older commentary, found on the 2006 DVD, by filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich, with audio interview excerpts of director Fritz Lang from a 1965 interview. I didn't fully re-listen but it had plenty of interesting parts. Bogdanovich is always good to hear from and the Lang inserts were a unique touch. There is also a theatrical trailer.

Fritz Lang's Clash by Night was based on Clifford Odets' 1941 play and the titles was taken from a line in Matthew Arnold's 1851 poem "Dover Beach" with the film showing a lot of the fishing industry in Monterey, California. Clash by Night is notable as the first major film to credit Marilyn Monroe before the title (fourth billing.) It is two stories - separated by a year and while having enough Noir conventions to qualify as a cycle inclusion it's an anti-romance with dramatic, flawed, and often, cynical characters. It has a great cast with Barbara Stanwyck (who replaced Joan Crawford) as unsatisfy-able Mae, Robert Ryan brutally effective as the misogynist Earl, innocent cannery gal Marilyn and devoted Paul Douglas in one of his best roles. The actor squeezed a lot into his 52-years being married 5 times including to actresses Virginia Field (The Earth Dies Screaming) and Jan Sterling (Ace in the Hole.) I was pleased to see this via Warner Archive's improved Blu-ray a/v. Recommended for Noirish Lang, Stanwyck, Ryan and glimpses of early Monroe (during production scandalous nude calendar photos of Marilyn surfaced.)