High Tide (1947)

(On Cable TV, July 2022) While it’s not a good habit of mine to sometimes delay writing my reviews for a few days/weeks after seeing the film in question, it does help in distinguishing the striking from the dull. So it is that the most vivid image I keep from High Tide is its terrific opening sequence, a framing device that begins with two men stuck under a car on a beach where the tide is slowly but unstoppably rising. Rescue being out of reach, the only thing left to do is to explain how they got there… and flash back to the previous few weeks. The rest of the film is far more standard film noir fare, with a lively but imperfectly dosed mixture of private investigators, organized criminals and newspapermen. Coming from a smaller studio, the film was made quickly and cheaply, with some crucial narrative tissue left underdeveloped—to say nothing of characterization or atmosphere. (The entire film is barely 72 minutes long.)   Lee Tracy’s not bad as a weathered newspaper editor (building on a legacy of newspapermen roles in the early 1930s), while Don Castle offers a bit of a sounding board while both of them wait for the tide to rise. Some of the cinematography and dialogue do work well, though: this is core film noir, and its restoration by the Film Noir Foundation seems particularly appropriate.