The Sea Wolf

An adaptation of Jack London's 1904 novel, written for the screen by Robert Rossen. Michael Curtiz directed and built it less as a sea adventure than as a confined psychological thriller; almost all of it happens on one ship inside fog. Two passengers pulled from a sinking ferry find themselves aboard the sealing schooner Ghost. Its captain, Wolf Larsen, is well read, intelligent and entirely without mercy; he believes force is the only reality and uses his crew to prove it. Edward G. Robinson plays Larsen, in what is regarded as one of his best performances. John Garfield is a sailor on the run and Ida Lupino a woman who has escaped from prison, with Alexander Knox as the intellectual writer. The release date matters. In 1941, months before America entered the war, Rossen reshaped London's story into an open allegory of tyranny: the ship stands in for occupied Europe and Larsen is a Nazi in all but name. Warner shortened the film for release. The fourteen minutes cut out were recovered seventy years later and the complete version restored; the 104-minute print in circulation now is that one. Who it is for: viewers who want the dark end of classical Hollywood and thrillers built around a single monstrous character. Who it is not for: anyone expecting adventure. The film is argument rather than action, and it keeps the philosophical half of the novel.