• THE SEA WOLF

    Edward G. Robinson, Ida Lupino, John Garfield in the Sea Wolf



  • THE SEA WOLF

    Abstract:
    Wolf Larson (Edward G. Robinson) is the psychopathic captain of the Ghost, a veritable death ship for its crew, many of whom have been shanghaied. While the intellectual Humphrey Van Weyden (Alexander Knox) attempts to understand Larson, escaped convicts George Leach (John Garfield) and Ruth Webster (Ida Lupino) plot to escape his fascistic domination. Robinson realizes the tragic dimension of his role in this stylish adaptation of London's novel.


    Summary:
    The first sceen adaptation of Jack London's THE SEA WOLF appeared in 1913, within the author's lifetime and only ten years after the novel was written. Since then, six other versions have been filmed, the last being WOLF LARSEN in 1957. Of all of these versions, the most memorable remains the 1941 Warner Bros. production directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Edward G. Robinson as Wolf Larsen, the tyrannical and amoral captain of the GHOST.

    Throughout the 1930's, Warners' turned out a cycle of socially relevant dramas, such as I AM A FUGITIVE FROM A CHAIN GANG (1932), WILD BOYS OF THE ROAD (1933), MARKED WOMEN (1937), and THEY WON'T FORGET (1937). These films were peopled with working-class characters that appealed to a Depression-era audience, and they combined realism with melodramatic action. In a quest for greater prestige Warner Bros. also searched for scripts adapted from literary classics. THE SEA WOLF must have seemed like a good choice, since it contains plenty of excitement and has something of a literary reputation. London's primary thematic intention in the novel had been to attack Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy of the superman through the allegorical figure of Wolf Larsen. In 1941, with the Fascist powers acting upon their concept of the "Master Race," threatening to swallow up a large portion of the globe, the analogy of the story to the atmosphere of the 1940's must have impressed the film's screenwriter, Robert Rossen.

    Although several of Hollywood's wartime propaganda efforts may appear simplistic or even elementary to modern viewers, it seems rather presumptuous to judge from the critically safer vantage point of hindsight. In fact, some of the trendier films of the more recent 1960's also seem naive by today's standards. In the 1940's, however, it was not difficult to be affected by the thinly disguised propaganda in films such as THE SEA WOLF or Alfred Hitchcock's LIFEBOAT (1944). In the latter film, for example, a lifeboat serves as a microcosm containing all of the conflicts that the war imposed on society at large. The sealing- ship Ghost functions in a similar manner in THE SEA WOLF, and it is not difficult to note certain resemblances between Walter Slezak's character of the Nazi captain in LIFEBOAT and that of Wolf Larsen as portrayed by Robinson in THE SEA WOLF.

    THE SEA WOLF is an adventure film with overtones of sadism and grandiose delusions. The plot itself is simple and little changed from the novel. The survivors of a ferry crash are picked up by a freighter commanded by a psychopathic captain, Wolf Larsen (Edward G. Robinson), who holds them captive. The characters include a writer, Humphrey Van Weyden (Alexander Knox), two young and rather tough escaped convicts, George Leach (John Garfield) and Ruth Webster (Ida Lupino), a drunken doctor named Louie Prescott (Gene Lockhart), and a cook (Barry Fitzgerald), in addition to a crew played by a number of Warner Bros. stock "heavies. "

    Larsen's death ship is little more than a pirate schooner on which the captives suffer through beatings, a suicide, and finally a mutiny during which the survivors attempt to escape. Finally, Van Weyden, Leach, and Webster, who have escaped in an open boat but are adrift aimlessly in the fog, are pursued by Larsen on the Ghost. The malevolent captain suffers from severe headaches, however, and is overcome by a seizure accompanied by blindness. When the small boat finally comes alongside the Ghost in the fog, the three escapees stumble back onboard to find the captain alone and blind in his mutiny-ruined ship, evil to the end.

    In his adaption of the London novel, Rossen made some important changes in the characters. London had narrated his story from the point of view of one Humphrey Van Weyden, an effete intellectual who, although a weakling at the beginning, gradually becomes stronger, outwitting Larsen in the process. The film adopts an omniscient view, and the character of Van Weyden is eased from the center of the story. The primary result of this change is that Larsen looms as a much more dominant figure in the film than he was in the novel. Also, one of the novel's minor characters, George Leach, who had drowned midway through the book, is shifted to a leading role in opposition to Larsen in the film version. It is ultimately Van Weyden who drowns along with Larsen in order to save Leach. With this shift in the plot, the character of Van Weyden's romantic interest, Maud Brewster, is eliminated. In her place is substituted a new female character, Ruth Webster, who is the type of good-bad girl ideally suited to the character of Leach as portrayed by Garfield. Although she serves a similar function to that of London's Maud, she is more directly pivotal to the conflict between Leach and Larsen. Both of these lovers are on the run from the law. Leach, in fact, volunteered for service on the Ghost while several other crew members had to be shanghaied.

    Despite the changes and the compressions necessary to bring the story to the screen, a good deal of the original novel, including its central theme, remains completely intact. One could even argue that the film has made some improvements. For example, in London's treatment, it takes a certain amount of willpower on the part of the reader to generate much sympathy for Van Weyden. In the film, audience identification with Garfield's Leach is made immediately, and the conflict between him and Larsen is structurally better balanced. Essentially, the role of Van Weyden is the same in both versions -- he is an onlooker. Ruth Webster is also a much more convincing character in the film than is the rather bloodless and idealized Maud in the written version. She also helps get things going sooner, in a dramatic sense, by entering the story at the beginning rather than halfway through.

    Whether all of these changes reflected Rossen's own ideas or were demanded by the studio's front office is unverifiable and ultimately unimportant. Intellectual characters such as Van Weyden rarely figured centrally in the themes of films of the 1940's. Ideologically, the film fits well within the Warners' mold of socially conscious thrillers, several of which Rossen himself had written. It also bears certain similarities to several of the writer's later films made when he was a director, notably his version of novelist Robert Penn Warren's ALL THE KING'S MEN (1949).

    Stylistically, the film's authorship is even harder to resolve. From his first Hollywood feature, THE THIRD DEGREE, in 1926, until 1953, the Hungarian-born Curtiz dutifully filled his contract at Warner Bros. to every one's mutual satisfaction. After the collapse of the studio system, when Curtiz was free to go elsewhere, his career ironically went into a precipitous decline. A competent rather than inspired director, even his best films, such as CASABLANCA (1942) and MILDRED PIERCE (1945), seem successful only partially as a result of his direct responsibility and appear more visibly dependent in varying degrees upon other hands as well as choice casting. None of these films is without directorial flair, but Curtiz could never imbue his films with any consistent personality as did Raoul Walsh in similar circumstances. Apart from a detectable tendency toward expressionism, which seems endemic of many films of the 1940's, it is difficult to discern his stylistic signature from other middle-of-the-road stylists such as Jean Negulesco or George Sherman.

    In the case of THE SEA WOLF, Curtiz is ably abetted by Sol Polito' s low-key cinematography, Anton Grot's art direction, and the special effects of Byron Haskin and Nathan Levinson. For long shots, miniatures were used, since the entire film was shot in the studio. This was probably a matter of thematic necessity. The setting is almost continually fogbound, creating a claustrophobic atmosphere. The expressive use of back-lighting, as, for example, when Ruth Webster goes to meet Larsen in his cabin, imparts an oppressively Germanic flavor to the film. Erich Wolfgang Korngold, departing from the style he established in the Errol Flynn "swashbuckler" films, composed an excellently moody score.

    The casting is particularly appropriate, although at times it verges close to stereotyping, particularly in the case of Fitzgerald as the reptilian Cooky. Garfield and Lupino create some chemistry between them, balancing their hard-bitten roles with a degree of vulnerability. As Van Weyden, Knox is intelligent and quietly courageous and not at all weak like the character in the novel. Dominating all of the scenes, however, is Robinson as Wolf Larsen. There is always some danger of Larsen's becoming a mere abstraction of evil, but Robinson makes the character credible and human. This is particularly true in the film, when the nearly insane and blind Larsen staggers around the Ghost. Robinson fully realizes the tragic dimension of the role. For all of the film's many contributions, it is Robinson's performance that stays in the mind longest.


    Release Date: 1941

    Production Line:
    Hal B. Wallis for Warner Bros.

    Director: Michael Curtiz

    Cinematographer: Sol Polito

    File Editor: George Amy

    Additional Credits:
    Art direction - Anton Grot
    Special effects - Byron Haskin and Nathan Levinson
    Music - Erich Wolfgang Korngold

    Run Time: 100 minutes

    Cast:
    Wolf Larsen - Edward G. Robinson
    George Leach - John Garfield
    Ruth Webster - Ida Lupino
    Humphrey Van Weyden - Alexander Knox
    Doctor Louie Prescott - Gene Lockhart
    Cooky - Barry Fitzgerald
    Johnson - Stanley Ridges
    Svenson - Francis McDonald
    Young Sailor - David Bruce
    Harrison - Howard Da Silva
    Crewman - Louis Mason

    Review Sources:
    New York Times: March 26, 1941, p. 27
    Newsweek: March 31, 1941, p. 66
    Time: April 14, 1941, p. 93
    Variety: March 26, 1941, p. 16

    Named persons in Production Credits:
    Hal B. Wallis

    Studios named in Production Credits:
    Warner Bros.

    Screenplay (Author):
    Robert Rossen
    Jack London

    Black and White



    Video Available.
    Genre:
    Drama


    Notes:
    Beginning in 1913, there have been seven screen versions to date of THE SEA WOLF, among which this 1941 production is universally considered to be the most memorable.



    THE SEA WOLF., Magill's Survey of Cinema, 06-15-1995.

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