Fog Over Frisco

Bette Davis is an absolute delight and this is worth watching just to see her in her pre-code sultry best. There are some great costumes, nice sets and sequences but the plot and direction gets muddled midway after a great 20 minutes at the beginning. They try to cram too much into a short space and then move too quickly without making sense of what happens. There is also some corny screwball stuff which interferes with the flow of the film. This is what you would call a b picture with some good appearances by an interesting cast but it has an identity crisis going from serious danger in the air beginning with hot fox Davis and ends up as your average who done it vehicle.

This film is so rapidly paced that some of the action flew by me too fast to fully understand, although some of the confusion was cleared up in the end. Director William Dieterle used fancy wipes rather than fade-outs and overlapping sound to speed the action along. I prefer a more leisurely pace to enable me to digest the material. Still, the ending was exciting with location shooting in San Francisco a big plus, and it's always enjoyable to watch Bette Davis, who had emerged as a big star by this time. Hugh Herbert provides very minimal comic relief as an inept photographer. I was reminded a bit by Hitchcock's film "Psycho (1960)," but you'll have to watch this film to see what I mean.

If you watch this only once it will strike you as a 7/10 because, unless you have the attention of a speed reader, much will escape you. After a second viewing and filling in all of the gaps, you'll likely see it as 8/10. This is a fast paced crime drama in which Bette Davis plays Arlene Bradford, the wicked stepdaughter of a wealthy man, and Margaret Lindsay plays the good daughter, Val. Everett Bradford is the father of Val, but he was once married to Arlene's mother who was apparently a wild one who ran out on him. Arlene is made in her mother's image - something her stepfather won't let her forget. Bette Davis gives a very lively performance here as a spoiled and easily bored socialite who, in spite of the family drama, has a good relationship with stepsister Val.

The whole movie centers on a complex securities smuggling racket that involves Arlene using her stepfather's business as a means of laundering the stolen securities - without his knowledge of course. When Arlene turns up dead, there are a multitude of suspects including the girl's own stepfather.

Bette Davis gives an energetic performance that presages the great roles to come, in spite of the fact that she is only in the first half of the film. Hugh Herbert plays the bumbling newspaper photographer who actually stumbles across a key clue. Warner contract player Robert Barrat plays the Bradford family butler, Thorne, who seems way too interested in Arlene's comings and goings.

I highly recommend this one, but only if you have the time to sit through it twice.

Considering the reputations and historicity of Bette Davis and Michael Curtiz, why hasn't anyone issued this marvelously little fast-paced film on video? Davis is lightning-sharp as wicked Arlene, and Margaret Lindsay was an interesting early Warners player. I understand that Jack Warner, in the early days of the talkies, used this film to demonstrate what a director could accomplish with a tight budget and filmic expertise.

Mysterious crime, unconventional way of solving it, witty dialog, fast paced events, car chasing, unexpected resolution... are we watching just another detective action film starring Mel Gibson? No, it is 1934 film Fog over Frisco. It is amazing how little has this type of film evolved in last 70 years or so. The only "improvements" we see in modern versions of action films are slimy kissing and love-making scenes, two dozen explosions and rolling stock of a smaller country destroyed. Oh, yeah, done to include something for everyone and to extend the film time to standard one and a half hour.

Well Fog over Frisco is what a good action film should look like. It is absolutely enough to have a bit more than a hour to tell everything. Of course, Dieterle could easily make a film a bit longer and the plot more understandable, but this amazing pace is what makes this film even more special. You are moving in the spiral of events so fast that it is necessary to see it twice to get everything straight.

But this is not all. We see some really exceptional acting here. Bette Davis makes from one seemingly tiny role more than some leading character actors did in the whole acting career. She is absolutely convincing as Arlene, a spoiled and bored rich girl and you can never see Bette in another film to be so beautiful, glamorous, amusing and enchanting. No wonder that most men in film really seem to be in love with her. Margaret Lindsay, who plays a real head role of her step-sister Val, isn't match for Ms. Davis, however she did her part correctly. Other notable performances include Donald Woods playing Tony and Hugh Herbert playing Izzy, who are convincing as a witty reporter - funny photographer pair.

This film is one of the most underestimated films in the whole history of Hollywood and is a must-see for 1930s film period.