I wasn’t familiar with actor Lee Tracy before seeing 1947’s High Tide, but an extra on the blu-ray has noir expert Imogen Sara Smith talking about his lengthy career. At the time this film was made, that career had been derailed when he caused a scandal in Mexico which required him to be snuck out of that country. Reports vary on what actually transpired, but the rumor is he urinated off a hotel balcony and onto a military parade. Before this incident, he was much in demand, never as a leading man, but used whenever a fast-talking guy was needed. He was most often cast as a newspaper man so, if you’ve seen much cinema of the 1930’s and early 40’s, you can imagine what he sounds like.
Having said that, it is surprising Tracy is the lead in this film. He commands the screen well enough, but that voice is distracting. The staccato, machine-gun like torrent of syllables wasn’t as surprising as a certain grating tonal quality that reminded me most of Gilbert Gotfried. At any given moment, I thought he was going yell, “AFLAC!”
Here, he’s the editor of a newspaper owner by Douglas Walton. When we first see these two, Walton is having a conversation with a local gangster played by Anthony Warde, and the editor declares he won’t allow the thug to meddle with the operation of the paper. In fact, he intends to publish an expose on the man the next day.
Tracy also runs roughshod over his boss, and he’s not the only one to do so. The unfortunate, mousy Walton is also getting cuckcolded by Julie Bishop, who plays his wife. Walton is so meek that a cup and saucer he throws in rage doesn’t break. This was in reaction to Bishop seeking to reconnect with Don Castle and, by reconnect, I mean through their genitals.
Castle is back in town because Tracy has offered him a job on the paper. As if that wasn’t enticement enough, the editor has also made his friend a beneficiary on his life insurance policy. Castle might be the recipient of that money before long, given somebody has been taking shots, and not of the verbal kind, at Tracy and Walton. Even before that, it seemed likely Tracy’s end was near, as the editor claims he can smell death. I wondered if that was because he’s old enough to possibly be on a first-name basis with it.
Instead, it is Walton who gets killed, shot to death on the steps of the newspaper office. A detective played by Regis Toomey chastises Castle for getting to the scene of the crime so quickly, which I found odd, as this is simply where the man works.
Toomey and Castle were also in The Guilty, another noir on the same blu-ray as this title. Castle, at least, is better here than he was in that other film, or maybe he just has better dialogue this time. The two pictures even share the same director and producer. Both are also a convoluted mess that seem to chase their own tails until they are too tired to continue.
At least the writing is sharper in this than in the other movie. Consider Castle’s rebuke to an allegation: “If you’re implying I can fire .45 slugs from a .38, then I’ve got a vaudeville act.” Or this, reporting on a corpse on the floor: “He’s having a slight case of rigor mortis in the middle of my living room floor.”
Alas, much like the other film, this one ends on a solution that is somehow both surprising and unsatisfactory. My main issue is I didn’t find it believable, but I would be hard-pressed to say exactly why that is.
The same applies to the wraparound element that bookcases yet another story told entirely in flashback. The film opens on Tracy and Castle in a car crashed on a beach, with neither man apparently able to get away. Both are resigned to drowning once the tide comes in far enough, establishing a notably fatalistic tone.
The tide is part of an interesting credits sequence, with each list of names and titles materializing as a wave comes in, and dissolving with the next, as if the ocean is washing each in and them taking them away. It’s an interesting effect and I wondered how it was accomplished.
Dir: John Reinhardt
Starring Lee Tracy, Don Castle
Watched on Flicker Alley blu-ray