Directed by Orson Welles • 1947 • United States
Starring Rita Hayworth, Orson Welles, Everett Sloane
Orson Welles’s puzzle-box noir scrambles the conventions of the genre to create a triumph of Hollywood surrealism. The director stars as an unwitting Irish sailor who finds himself drawn into a web of treachery when he takes a job as a crewman on the yacht of a famed lawyer (Everett Sloane) and his bombshell wife (a blonde Rita Hayworth, whose marriage to Welles dissolved shortly after filming). The famously byzantine plot—a tangle of head-spinning twists and double crosses—takes a back seat to the shadow-etched visuals, bravura set pieces (including iconic hall-of-mirrors shoot-out), and dreamlike mood.
Up Next in Coastal Thrillers
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The Fog
Directed by John Carpenter • 1980 • United States
Starring Jamie Lee Curtis, Adrienne Barbeau, Tom AtkinsLong-buried secrets come back to haunt a small town in this triumph of atmosphere and creeping unease from genre great John Carpenter. Drawing inspiration from the moody masterworks of Val L...
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Out of the Fog
Directed by Anatole Litvak • 1941 • United States
Starring John Garfield, Ida Lupino, Thomas MitchellJohn Garfield and Ida Lupino star in the big-screen adaptation of Irwin Shaw’s play “The Gentle People,” a pre–World War II allegory warning of the seductive allure and danger inherent in preten...
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The Breaking Point
Directed by Michael Curtiz • 1950 • United States
Starring John Garfield, Patricia Neal, Phyllis ThaxterMichael Curtiz brings a master skipper’s hand to the helm of this thriller, Hollywood’s second crack at Ernest Hemingway’s “To Have and Have Not.” John Garfield stars as Harry Morgan, an hone...
