Clash by Night (1952)

Marilyn Monroe famously earned director approval on all of her films in her 1955 contract renegotiation with 20th Century Fox, but she had a consistent record of working with great directors long before that. In her brief career she worked with Howard Hawks, Billy Wilder, Joseph Mankiewicz, John Huston, Otto Preminger, Laurence Olivier, George Cukor, and, in 1952, Fritz Lang on the film Clash by Night. More than just a luminous actor, Monroe had impeccable taste.

I always appreciate Lang’s penchant for capturing the nastiness of mankind, and he turns what could have been a tawdry domestic drama into a sinister examination of our choices and impulses; it’s also a thoroughly entertaining film. The always self-assured Barbara Stanwyck owns the movie as Mae, a woman caught between two men, and Robert Ryan makes an impression as the man with whom she carries out an affair. Ryan bares a rugged, handsome face perfectly suited for Old Hollywood. Monroe plays a small supporting role as Peggy, girlfriend to Mae’s sister Joe (Keith Andes).

Peggy is a more blue-collar role for Monroe than the princesses she would soon routinely play at the height of her glamorous stardom; when we first meet Peggy she is working at a fish plant. She plays the role with a buoyant energy, as if she can move a bit more freely not weighed down by all those diamonds. Peggy is tough and defiantly opposed to getting married, another departure from many roles Monroe would play. Her character is far more developed than in her 1950 breakout films and she is beginning to show her dramatic range, a range that would be fully on display later in the year with Don’t Bother to Knock.

Her beauty in Clash by Night is also overwhelming, even as an unassuming character like Peggy. It can seem like a shallow thing to say, but not so in the context of cinema, where making a visual impression is the foundation of the art form. Monroe looks magnificent, and has an especially timeless quality in her black-and-white films. To see her become an A-list star a year after a role like this should have been no surprise; there was no one else like her.

Rating: 3.5/5