High Tide (1947) [w/Commentary] [Flicker Alley]

Director: John Reinhardt
Writers: Robert Presnell Sr. (screenplay), Raoul Whitfield (story "Inside Job"), Peter Milne (additional dialogue)
Stars: Lee Tracy, Don Castle, Julie Bishop

High Tide (1947) forgotten noir, set in a spectacularly corrupt Los Angeles, is a crackling crime thriller rescued thanks to the combined efforts of the Film Noir Foundation, UCLA Film & Television Archive, and the British Film Institute.

Restoration funding was provided by the Film Noir Foundation in conjunction with the Packard Humanities Institute. The action gets rolling with one of the greatest framing gimmicks in noir: a speeding car crashes onto a rocky shoreline and its occupants, newspaper editor Hugh Fresney (Lee Tracy) and private eye Tim Slade (Don Castle) recount the plot as the rising tide threatens to drown them.

In flashback, we learn that Slade was brought in by muckraking editor Fresney as protection against a mobster (Anthony Warde) his paper is investigating. Things quickly get complicated as Fresney’s boss has a wife (Julia Bishop) eager to resume a smoldering romance with Slade. When a main character gets iced early, everybody becomes a suspect, and the double-crosses start multiplying at a breakneck pace.

High Tide was the second of two crime thrillers independently produced in 1947 by Texas oil tycoon Jack Wrather. It carries over from The Guilty the same screenwriter and cameraman, the same protagonist in actor Don Castle, and the same director, John Reinhardt, whose playful inventiveness enlivened several post-WW II films noir.



Audio Commentary by film historian and biographer Alan K. Rode

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