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When John Garfield emerges out of the fog in the opening sequence of Anatole Litvak’s appropriately titled Out of the Fog, his smile looks plotting, expectant, and sly. Garfield fans may expect him to be the good guy, but they will be disappointed: he’s a total scumbag here. Harold Goff (Garfield) is running a protection racket in a waterfront Brooklyn neighborhood and targeting a couple of new “clients” in the form of restaurant cook Olaf Johnson (John Qualen) and widowed tailor Jonah Goodwin (Thomas Mitchell), who co-own a small fishing boat they keep at the dock. By threatening the use of force, Goff is able to extort not only a weekly fee from the partners but also the companionship of Goodwin’s daughter Stella (Ida Lupino), who’s bored and restless and sees the potential for an exciting life with bad boy Goff. By focusing on one entrepreneurial gangster rather than a sprawling mob syndicate, the film offers a more intimate, atmospheric lens on the tolls of organized crime than other films of the period. Litvak makes excellent use of the Warner Brothers fog machines to heighten suspense and darken the mood, but this is still a very early, relatively innocent period in the noir cycle.
