. . . with Edgar G. Robinson totally credible as a tyrant suited to fit among Captain Bligh, Captain Ahab, and Captain Queeg on the Captain's Mount Rushmore. Robinson's Capt. Wolf Larsen of the GHOST embodies novelist Jack London's brooding intellectual slowly losing his faculties on the virtual pirate ship he runs. Larsen is a man who NEVER listens to the angels of his better nature; who never hesitates to carry out the sadistic commands of the Satan on his shoulder. He takes his motto from a line in John Milton's PARADISE LOST: "It's better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven." This film adaptation is well-plotted, nicely-paced, and superbly-cast. It is especially gratifying to see Barry Fitzgerald BEFORE he got religion. Playing Larsen's shipboard snitch "Cookie," Fitzgerald's cackling Iago is just as convincing here as his take on Bing Crosby's aging mentor priest would be a few years later in GOING MY WAY. Shadowy lawmen hound John Garfield's character onto Larsen's GHOST ship, just as real-life FBI tails running amok would hound him to death a few years later (yet another case of life imitating art).
Review of The Sea Wolf
