Along with The Big Knife this is just about the best film adaptation of a Cliff Odets play we have and it's a great pity that the original play is almost never revived these days. Odets took his title from Matthew Arnold's poem Dover Beach, a place 'where ignorant armies clash by night' and it's possible that some over-educated movie executive (if that's not a contradiction in terms) seized on this as a reason to shift the locale from Odets' New York to the fishing village portrayed here. Writer mavens will revel in Odets raw, visceral dialogue, one of his trademarks and actors who love dialogue - and not all of them do, witness Gary Cooper; yep, you got it in one - relish getting their teeth into Odets. Stanwyck and Ryan might have been born to fling white-hot chunks of Odets at each other but even Paul Douglas makes it work for him. In a film of standout performances J. Carroll Naish steals every scene he's in and even those he isn't in that aren't nailed down, surely the benchmark of a great film. Even the slightly wooden Keith Andes and the tyro Marilyn Monroe come out of this smelling of roses courtesy of Stanwck, Ryan, Douglas and, leave us not forget, Clifford Odets. This is one of the great ones.
Review of Clash by Night
